Iraida Yusupova

All day long the TV shows an ice-hole. Ice-holes are the theme of the day, a winter tradition that unites believers and sportsmen, stars and walruses, the president and the unemployed. In the centre of the news reports are the topics of Baptism, fishing and the criminal chronicle. The president and a pike, the artist and the crit- ics, the oligarch and the law enforcement team – they all meet at an ice- hole in search of solutions for their problems. The jobless Muscovite, with bad habits, dives down an ice-hole for a wife, just like Sadko. The fairy- tale plots intertwine with documentary context, and it is no longer clear where reality ends. Remember Nietzsche: if you long gaze into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.

Isaac Berg is the only Jew in a small town who miraculously survived during the german occupation. The old man is haunted by one idea - he decided to raise the gravestones with which the nazis paved the road and take them to where his loved ones were killed.

600 km north of Arkhangelsk on the shore of the White Sea is the fishing village of Shoyna. In winter there is an endless night and an icy desert, in summer there is an incessant sun and salty winds that cover the houses with sand up to the roofs. The film is a metaphorical reflection – about Russia, about the eternal trials that have fallen to its lot, about the coveted freedom and about the paradoxical attraction to unfreedom that exists in every Russian person…