Anton Zhelnov

The new film about Sergei Bondarchuk is not a traditional description of the life of a famous director and not a biopic timed to coincide with a round date. The creators of the film focus on a unique period in the history of world cinema - the post-war "thaw" euphoria and the time of great hopes, the key character of which was the author of "War and Peace". What was this man and cinematographer who shot both chamber dramas and megalomaniac battle projects? And how did he, the winner of many USSR awards, manage to become a figure of world significance and a link between the two superpowers during the Cold War era?

Documentary about Vladimir Sorokin, one of the most prominent Russian writers.

In Poor Folk, Ilya Kabakov talks about his sources and influences, including the tragic life of his mother, which had a profound effect on his views and artistic career. Together with his wife and collaborator Emilia he discusses Soviet underground art, the birth of Moscow Conceptualism, the couple’s emigration to the USA, and international acclaim after thirty years of almost no exhibitions (Kabakov did not show his work at state-sanctioned exhibitions in the Soviet Union): today the duo’s works are in the world’s leading museums, including MoMA, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Hamburger Kunsthalle.

In Poor Folk, Ilya Kabakov talks about his sources and influences, including the tragic life of his mother, which had a profound effect on his views and artistic career. Together with his wife and collaborator Emilia he discusses Soviet underground art, the birth of Moscow Conceptualism, the couple’s emigration to the USA, and international acclaim after thirty years of almost no exhibitions (Kabakov did not show his work at state-sanctioned exhibitions in the Soviet Union): today the duo’s works are in the world’s leading museums, including MoMA, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Hamburger Kunsthalle.

A story about the most mysterious and, possibly, the most significant of the living Russian-speaking writers - "Russian Salinger". Sasha Sokolov is a classic of Russian literature and Russian modernism, who influenced writers such as Mikhail Shishkin, Vladimir Sorokin, Vladimir Sharov, Viktor Pelevin. True, so far little has been known about Sokolov itself.

Fellow poets, excited ladies, the love of his life, Marina Basmanova, two psychiatric hospitals, KGB interrogations, a People's Court, prison, exile, forced emigration. All of this was Brodsky's Leningrad. The biography, which was written for, in Akhmatova's words, "our red-head". On the fourth of June 1972, when the plane carrying Brodsky took off from Pulkovo airport, this biography ended. And a new life began that almost no one in his homeland is aware of. Russia, America, Italy, Sweden, Finland - the filmmakers have traced the journey of their hero, perhaps the most well-traveled of all Russian writers. The places, that became his biography. And the people, that defined his fate.