Evgeniy Sannikov

Yekaterinburg of the 90s. A company of young poets, including the most talented — a junior researcher at the Institute of Geophysics Boris Ryzhy, wanders through the cold and dangerous streets of the city from party to party. Ironic and friendly, he can negotiate with local brothers with equal ease, drive to Moscow for the "Anti-Booker" award, fight at the stall and crash into the department.

Captain Fedor Volkonogov works in law enforcement. He is on the good books of the management, and his colleagues respect him. But one day, his life abruptly changes: he is declared a criminal. The Captain manages to run away before he is arrested. Suddenly he turns into an outcast, whom his former colleagues search across the whole city. At night Volkonogov is visited by a messenger from the other world, who warns him that after death he will go hell and be tormented forever. But he has an opportunity to change his fate and get to paradise if he repents, and at least one person forgives him. The Captain embarks on his way to find forgiveness. But he cannot even fathom what tests are awaiting him on this way.

1984, Sverdlovsk, USSR. A shy freshman, an entrepreneur, a poet and two charming it-girls navigate life in a student dorm, sharing their griefs and joys, all for one and one for all. Suddenly a horrible accident blows up the life of the dorm when a female student commits suicide. The dorm is a miniature model of the world that encapsulates the full range of human passions, acts of bravery and cowardice, aspirations for virtue and failures, of love, friendship and betrayal.

Fall of 1941. Freshly graduated from school, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya volunteers for a partisan unit. During an assignment, her comrades are ambushed, and she is captured by the Nazis. She endures hours of grueling interrogations and horrendous torture, but defiantly refuses to divulge any information that would compromise other units’ partisan missions. She doesn’t even tell her captors her real name. Zoya’s sacrifice was not in vain; it ignited fire in the hearts of millions of people and became the symbol of selfless heroism during WWII. She is one of the most celebrated heroes of that time.

1998, Nalchik. A Jewish family is in trouble: the youngest son and his bride do not come home, and in the morning, a ransom note arrives. The ransom is so high that the family is forced not only to sell its small business, but also to seek help from its fellow tribesmen.

Suffering from a fatal malady as a child the future great physicist, Nikola Tesla, promised his parents that he would recover under the sole condition...if they allowed him to become an engineer. And he kept his promise. Never ending yearning for knowledge, research practice, creative endeavor, discoveries that have unfixed all established notions - that's what was the characteristic of the great physicist. Nikola Tesla would always remain a scientist whose life was a sort of mystification rather than pure reality.