Andrey Smirnov

Taxi driver and unsuccessful actor Seva Gorelov accidentally meets his first love Masha Sokolova, once a young and carefree girl, and now a thirty-year-old spoiled kept woman. Seva works part-time in a taxi, and Masha accidentally becomes his client. To go far, to Sochi, to their homeland with Seva teenage love. Masha has a wedding there in a few days, but not with Seva, of course, but with a rich patron. From the very beginning it becomes clear that this journey will not end with anything good. 1600 kilometers of adventure, well flavored with humor, ambition, tears, resentment, flirting, passion and a great feeling, which again is out of place.

Chronicles how loader Roman Shtorkin becomes a vampire and receives the title of Rama II.

In 1957 French student Pierre Durand comes to Moscow to do an internship at Moscow State University. Here he meets ballerina Kira Galkina and photographer Valera Uspenskiy. With them he discovers the cultural side of Moscow — not just the traditional one, but the underground one as well. During his year in Russia’s capital Pierre lives an entirely different life than what he’s used to. But the internship and the experience of the Soviet people’s way of life are not the only things Pierre is after. He’s searching for his father, White officer Tatishchev, who was arrested in the 1930s.

In 1957 French student Pierre Durand comes to Moscow to do an internship at Moscow State University. Here he meets ballerina Kira Galkina and photographer Valera Uspenskiy. With them he discovers the cultural side of Moscow — not just the traditional one, but the underground one as well. During his year in Russia’s capital Pierre lives an entirely different life than what he’s used to. But the internship and the experience of the Soviet people’s way of life are not the only things Pierre is after. He’s searching for his father, White officer Tatishchev, who was arrested in the 1930s.

In 1957 French student Pierre Durand comes to Moscow to do an internship at Moscow State University. Here he meets ballerina Kira Galkina and photographer Valera Uspenskiy. With them he discovers the cultural side of Moscow — not just the traditional one, but the underground one as well. During his year in Russia’s capital Pierre lives an entirely different life than what he’s used to. But the internship and the experience of the Soviet people’s way of life are not the only things Pierre is after. He’s searching for his father, White officer Tatishchev, who was arrested in the 1930s.

The shrill and tragic story about an event that involved Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. In an infantry regiment of the military based in the Tula region an offence occurs. In this regiment, the capital’s lieutenant Grigory Kolokoltsev — inspired by progressive ideas — does his service. A military tribunal and execution await the soldier charged with the offence. Kolokoltsev asks Count Tolstoy for help — and he decides to protect the innocent man. The pointed history about the complexity of choice and fidelity to one’s ideals is based on real events.

Viktor spends his free time trawling bars with ladies of questionable repute, from where he is picked up by a wife he doesn’t love, the mother of a child they never planned. Viktor himself was abandoned by his own father, his mother then committed suicide, and he was left to grow up in an orphanage. Years later, his errant dad returns, now a disabled felon, and Viktor discovers a timely legacy is in the offing – his father’s apartment. The documentation for securing dad’s move into an old people’s home is signed in a flash. Nevertheless, the only one that can take him is miles away and, what’s more, the invalid starts to recuperate during the journey, which is when their real problems begin.

A chronicle of the life of an illiterate Russian peasant woman between 1909 and 1921, focusing on her private life and major historic events in the country.

A chronicle of the life of an illiterate Russian peasant woman between 1909 and 1921, focusing on her private life and major historic events in the country.

A chronicle of the life of an illiterate Russian peasant woman between 1909 and 1921, focusing on her private life and major historic events in the country.

A two days from the life of Pyotr Drozdov, a highly ranked official from Moscow, which he spends with young museum employee Masha.

Elena is a woman of a certain age, living in a chic Moscow apartment with her wealthy businessman husband Vladimir. While Vladimir is estranged from his daughter, he does not mask his contempt for Elena's own child, who seems to be in constant need of financial assistance. When Vladimir suddenly falls ill and his volatile, nihilistic daughter comes back into the picture, Elena must hatch a plan for her own survival.

Rita's daughter is sick with leukemia. In order to obtain the money for a bone marrow transplant, she travels from Ukraine to Russia to become a surrogate mother. The homosexual couple who are the biological parents of the child die in an automobile accident. Rita is left six month pregnant, without any money, and with a dying daughter to care for. In order to save her daughter, Rita is prepared to do anything. She's drawn into the criminal world, from which she escapes with her daughter to Jordan in the Near East, where Bedouins treat cancer by means of nontraditional medicines.

The Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the arctic circle — where the sun never sets. Founded by Aki and Mika Kaurismäki along with Anssi Mänttäri and Peter von Bagh in 1985, the festival has played host to an international who’s who of directors and each day begins with a two-hour discussion. To mark the festival’s silver anniversary, festival director Peter von Bagh edited together highlights from these dialogues to create an epic four-part choral history of cinema drawn from the anecdotes, insights, and wisdom of his all-star cast: Coppola, Fuller, Forman, Chabrol, Corman, Demy, Kieslowski, Kiarostami, Varda, Oliveira, Erice, Rouch, Gilliam, Jancso — and 64 more. Ranging across innumerable topics (war, censorship, movie stars, formative influences, America, neorealism) these voices, many now passed away, engage in a personal dialogue across the years that’s by turns charming, profound, hilarious and moving.

A Polish ambassador (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz) finds his life falling into ruin following the death of his wife.

The year is 1817. Minon, a five-year-old girl, leaves her aunt Therese of Brunswick, who has raised her like a mother since her birth, to go and live with her parents, the Count and Countess von Stakelberg. One day, Gabrielle, her housekeeper, who is no longer in her right mind, reveals that her real father is the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Twenty years later, still intrigued by this confession, Minon decides to unravel the mystery of her origins. She returns to the place of her early childhood, hoping to find the truth with her aunt, who was for years the faithful friend of the great composer.

A tragic story of love and loneliness - this is the unknown life of the great Russian writer Ivan Bunin. The confused love story that involved Bunin, his wife Vera, the young poet Galina Plotnikova, opera singer Marga Kovtun and literary man Leonid Gurov. A work of great honesty and piercing psychology.

A detective-dramatic chronicle of love adventures of the famous Russian ballerina Olga Spesivtseva, nicknamed by contemporaries Red Giselle. It was Giselle who immortalized her name in 1924. It was "Giselle" that caused the psychic catastrophe in 1942.

According to ancient legend, the artist found a mineral that can revive any inanimate thing. To hide the mineral, he inserts it into a doll named Hagi. A century later, Hagi falls into the hands of a puppeteer, and he with horror discovers that the old doll is alive. Moreover, she also has a nasty character. Criminals try to take possession of it in order to use it for mercenary purposes. But they do not know the secrets of this doll - no one can take possession of it, but it has a destructive effect on any person who falls within its influence.

Closely based on Franz Kafka's book "Das Schloß", the movie shares the same action on a land surveyor who is called to a village to do a job that no one seems to have ordered. Once there, he takes up the struggle against bureaucracy emanating from the castle.

The ice has broken, gentlemen of the jury! New time requires a new image of the Turkish national Ostap Bender. He still selflessly loves money. As in the days of the NEP, his big blue dream remains white pants and distant Rio de Janeiro. His methods of achieving the goal are still the same - honest taking money from citizens.

A few weeks from the life of a Komsomol leaders in Soviet Union.

Krasnaya strela is the special train No.1 between Leningrad and Moscow. The film is set in the 1980s during perestroika in the Soviet Union. Kropotov (Lavrov) is communist CEO of a big industrial company in Leningrad. He is crafty and successful in getting a major order from the Soviet Government; building an automated assembly line. But his style of management clashes with his subordinates, talented engineers. Their potential is strangled by Kropotov's manipulative control. The government order is not accomplished and Kropotov gets fired. He is rethinking his outdated business style while on the train No.1 to Moscow.

Film is based on the eponymous book by V. Livanov. About a boy, who is adopted by the divorced man.

In their youth, they loved each other, but broke up. Ilya got married, became a doctor, Sasha learned to become an engineer, got married. And now they are together again, at a small, deaf station. They introduced themselves as husband and wife. In fact, while he is married to another, and she has the experience of a failed marriage. For eight days they will be in a remote stop where no one knows them and no one will interfere with love...

In their youth, they loved each other, but broke up. Ilya got married, became a doctor, Sasha learned to become an engineer, got married. And now they are together again, at a small, deaf station. They introduced themselves as husband and wife. In fact, while he is married to another, and she has the experience of a failed marriage. For eight days they will be in a remote stop where no one knows them and no one will interfere with love...

The heroes of the movie last seen each other on the Belarusian railway station in the summer of 1945. A quarter-century, they meet at the funeral of comrade.

The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town...

Two young directors adapted the short stories of two Russian authors whose works had been banned for decades, and so their film ended up in the censor’s vault as well – for twenty years. Both tales look back to the post-revolutionary era: 'Angel' speaks tragically of the brutality and destruction of the time, and 'The Homeland of Electricity' captures its haunting grotesquery.

The first film of a four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 novel. In St. Petersburg of 1805, Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a rich nobleman, is introduced to high society. His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, joins the Imperial Russian Army as aide-de-camp of General Mikhail Kutuzov in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon.

A seven-hour epic adaptation of the novel by Leo Tolstoy. The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

It is a story about 12 or 13 years old girl in the middle of 60-th in USSR. She is a pioneer. She is in love with her pioneer leader - 16-17 years old boy, who doesn't even notice her. In order to impress him she tries to find someone, who was a member of pioneer squad in 1923 - one of the first Soviet pioneers...

The film is about the hot war summer of 1944. A group of several gun crews defends a tiny bridgehead on the right bank of the Dniester. The fates of the main characters: the front-line soldier-battalion commander Babin, the young lieutenant Motovilov, the nurse Rita Tamashova and the rank-and-file gunners, soldiers, among whom are brave people, faint-hearted and scoundrels, unnoticed heroes, are shown in a setting of several hours of peaceful life before another violent attack of the enemy, after which not everyone will survive...

Two young scientists are exploring new fields of nuclear physics. Dmitry Gusev and Ilya Kulikov are good friends, but rivals in love. Dmitry marries Lyolya and they live happily together. Luck has it that he makes an important discovery. Unfortunately he exposes himself to radioactivity during the experiments. As a result he falls seriously ill. However Dmitry has a strong spirit. His will to live, the deep passion for his work and his strong love for mankind makes it possible for him to recover.