A young accountant from a provincial settlement suffers from the tyranny of his mother and is looking for an answer to the reasons for his father's suicide. The desire to change the direction of his life pushes him to flee to Moscow, where by the will of fate he finds himself in the life of an underground casino.
There is an urban legend that a seat in the local cinema theater is cursed and whoever takes it ends up dead. A group of high school friends start to believe the legend when some mysterious deaths occur after a day of skipping school at the cinema. The police begin their investigation while the teenagers start to suspect each other.
A group of friends decide to spend a weekend together at a country house, but an unexpected accident forces them to stop at a strange and remote estate. In this abandoned and eerie place, a rare antique camera is discovered. Slowly the camera draws them into a mystical and tragic chain of events that none of them could have seen coming. Anyone who has their picture taken by the camera sees a photo revealing their death. Many of them lose their lives in excruciating ways, as they race to solve the mystery of the camera.
On 9 May a German comes to Russia to marry the Russian beauty Alena, whom he had met in Berlin. The happy couple goes to the village to meet the bride’s relatives. However, Alena’s former husband Tolya is also on the way there: he has unexpectedly decided to get his wife back. Everything turns out as a romantic rivalry, which involves – apart from Tolya and Helmut – their friends, relatives, and the other inhabitants of the village: the businessman Yerofeev who has bought a house in the neighbourhood; a lost tank-man; and even a kite – they all meddle in the events.
In a Crimean filtration camp, after the evacuation of the White Army, an unnamed captain is haunted by memories of a brief romance as he tries to understand how the Russian Empire fell apart and who is to blame.
A mining town in Russia at the end of the nineties. A miners' strike has paralysed the place, corruption and fraud are flourishing in the transitional period from a socialist economy to a market economy. In this world of lost souls lives Yekaterina Artemovna (Katya). This unconspicuous woman has, in the words of her future lover, a "heart of gold". The only bright spots in her lonely life in a meagre communal apartment are literature and her work in the town library.
The only bright ray flashed in the life of the heroine is a visiting sailor. But he turns out to be a gigolo and leaves the poor woman. The tense string inside the heroine bursts, the iron nerves lose, and restrained Yekaterina at this point loses all patience with life and ready for the most desperate and cruel revenge...
