Andrey Kostyanov

Once this place was one country, the Soviet Union, but now it is the border between the Kaliningrad region and Lithuania, Russia and the European Union. The Russians, whose ancestors were brought here from the east, still live in German houses, among German cemeteries. Across the border - Lithuania, which survived the Soviet occupation, the mass exile of Lithuanians to Siberia and regained independence 30 years ago with the collapse of the USSR. The life of the border regions on both sides of the two-meter fence may be different, but people are similar.

A documentary about the late age of motherhood. The director of the film tells his own story - the doctor warns her about the possible difficulties with pregnancy due to endometriosis and insists on urgent IVF. However, in vitro fertilization is a process that needs to be prepared. Both financially and morally. And also you need to have a permanent partner and family support. What if one of the items is missing? What if a few are missing?

Seven people left the small village of Kedrovoye in the Sverdlovsk Region to fight in Syria with the composition of the PMCs Wagner. After the battle near Deir ez-Zor on February 7, where PMC suffered heavy losses, news is expected in Cedar.

All day long the TV shows an ice-hole. Ice-holes are the theme of the day, a winter tradition that unites believers and sportsmen, stars and walruses, the president and the unemployed. In the centre of the news reports are the topics of Baptism, fishing and the criminal chronicle. The president and a pike, the artist and the crit- ics, the oligarch and the law enforcement team – they all meet at an ice- hole in search of solutions for their problems. The jobless Muscovite, with bad habits, dives down an ice-hole for a wife, just like Sadko. The fairy- tale plots intertwine with documentary context, and it is no longer clear where reality ends. Remember Nietzsche: if you long gaze into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.

In the film Battle for Ukraine Andrei Konchalovsky, the famous Russian director, analyzes how Ukraine, a former part of the Soviet Empire and present big European country, struggles to escape from the close embrace of the former big brother, Russia, and not to become one of the American satellites. This extensive study lasted for almost three years. Many Ukrainian, Russian and American historians, politicians and journalists took part in this study, as well as the ex-President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, the ex-President of Slovakia Rudolf Schuster, the ex-President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, the ex-Prime Minister of Russia Viktor Chernomyrdin, and the businessman Boris Berezovsky.