Evgeniy Knyazev

The plot of the film develops in Moscow in the 1930s. A famous writer on the rise of his career suddenly finds himself at the center of a literary scandal. The play based on his play is removed from the repertoire, colleagues defiantly avoid meeting, in a matter of days he turns into an outcast. Soon after, he meets Margarita, who becomes his lover and muse. Inspired by her love and support, the writer takes on a new novel, where the characters are people from his environment, and the main character is the mysterious Woland, whose prototype is a recent acquaintance foreigner. The writer plunges headlong into the world of his novel and gradually ceases to notice how fiction and reality are intertwined into one whole.

In the courtyard of a convent run by Mother Ekaterina, a dozen people are trying to build a new life. Young novitiate Olga is a simple soul, honest and loving. When a troublemaker enters the community, Olga trusts him immediately, and things get complicated.

Plucked from an orphanage as a literal love slave, the now adult Natalija (a luminous Kseniya Kutepova) serves her ape-like husband by tending his prized cow—whose milk they sell to customers on passing trains. When hubby suddenly drops dead, however, Natalija’s narrow life of cows and rails finally starts opening up. Dumping his body at the local hospital, dropping by church to say a few prayers and trading in the cow for a pet goat, she slowly eliminates all trace of his former hold on her, searching out a new life in the freedom that emerges.

Based on the novel by Booker Prize Winner Ludmila Ulitskaya, The Funeral Party is set in August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?

Just yesterday Evgeni Vetrov had a completely different life. He had money, perfect reputation, was respected by his colleagues and most of all - he had love; but apparently he had enemies as well. One day Vetrov's wife was killed, being the only suspect he was soon found guilty. Now the only thing he can do is run, run, in order to find the real killer.

A story of a first love and a beautiful age of seventeen...

Directed by Lithuanian choreographer, Anželika Cholina, this multiple award-winning Vakhtangov Theatre production of Anna Karenina tells the story of Tolstoy’s classic novel entirely in contemporary dance. In this way, Cholina succeeds in finding the equivalent of Tolstoy's words in harmony and movement, with every gesture holding meaning. The distinctive music of Alfred Schnittke helps to reveal the inner turmoil of the characters and their depth. Winner of the "Villanueva Award", Best Foreign Performance, International Havana Theatre Festival; Winner "Crystal Turandot" Best Debut Performance, Olga Lerman.