Nikolai Ryabtsev

Returning to Saint Petersburg after a long exile, the dashing Yakovlev, a retired army officer, makes a comfortable living by winning other people's duels. An enigmatic, focused, and extremely skilled professional, he leaves a trail of dead bodies behind him as he swirls through polite society, frequently called upon to wield a pistol as a surrogate in duels at dawn. But when Yakovlev meets the naïve young Prince Tuchov and his beautiful sister, Princess Martha, the normally cold-hearted mercenary is surprised by hitherto undetected emotions. What transpires uncovers a series of revelations about his past and his present self.

In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.

Wealthy thrill-seekers pay huge premiums to have themselves inserted into military adventures, only this time things don't go exactly to plan.

After the murder of Krymov, Alika was sentenced to prison. In prison, she falls into the hands of a fragment of the novel "Anna Karenina". By pure chance, a director comes to the colony to select the heroines for the film of the same name, and Alika is trusted to play one of the roles...20 years have passed. Now Alika is a popular actress, she has a daughter. In a new life, psychological and criminal circumstances are again intertwined.

Today’s twenty-something Russians are the first generation in the country’s post-communist history to have grown up free. Their twenties are the age of freedom, of fast-changing events and intense emotions. Perhaps only at this age they can live a whole life in one day. A young girl and her two accident companions walk halfway around St.-Petersburg; they flirt and tease each other, and for ninety minutes they act out a real-time romantic drama. This stroll is full of laughter and tears against a backdrop of the hustle and bustle of the streets.