A group of scientists is sent to the planet Arkanar to help the local civilization, which is in the Medieval phase of its own history, to find the right path to progress. Their task is a difficult one: they cannot interfere violently and in no case can they kill. The scientist Rumata tries to save the local intellectuals from their punishment and cannot avoid taking a position.
An old Russian grandmother or "babushka", who took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, sacrificed everything for her children and even sold her house to get money for her grandchildren, is shuttled among those very grandchildren--products of the "new" Russia--none of whom want her to stay with them since she's too much of a "burden" for them.
The girl cut off her braid and went wherever she looked - to look for the groom. She is joined by a strange old man dressed in a transparent raincoat. There is a scythe about three blades on Grandfather's shoulder. He persistently pulls the girl "to the church" - to baptize someone, and the "first comer" should be the godfather. "I can't go to church," the girl objects. - There's a young, funny father there. I will laugh at him..." So she follows the old man past a blooming meadow, along a fast, cold river... Weaves a wreath along the way, decorating it with colored ostrich feathers caught from the water. A lot of events will happen along the way - one is more incomprehensible than the other, and then there will be a wedding and girls in embroidered sundresses with songs will carry garlands of hay on their shoulders with ribbons, red plows will float down the river, and in the foreground is a girl with a groom.
Military doctor General Klenski is arrested in Stalin's Russia in 1953 during an anti-Semitic political campaign accused of being a participant in so-called "doctors' plot".
Deaf Russian village - a real bearish corner. People live here like a hundred years ago, in their quiet and seemingly inconspicuous life there is everything - birth and death, the struggle of love and hate, good and evil, honor and betrayal.
In this gentle comedy, an unpopular resident in a Russian village has his life completely changed when he announces, entirely on a whim and just to upset things a bit, that he's moving to the Pacific coast.
The story of a writer who accidentally stumbles across the elixir of immortality and in doing so encounters the small group of immortals who have jealously guarded this secret for centuries. Once the writer has knowledge of this elixir, called 'Mafussalin', the group of five immortals give him a stark choice: either join them, with the price of admission, being a duel to the death between the immortal who accidentally gave the secret away or death at the hands of the group. As the writer makes up his mind, sometimes aided and at other times opposed by the ever shifting alliances from within the group, we discover how the other immortals became this way, their true ages and what they have done with this 'gift'.
