40-year-old provincial Natalya Nikitina has been living in St. Petersburg for the seventh year. She works as a nurse for ailing old people and endures their countless quirks and humiliations. Once in her life, a new friend appears - a masseuse named Love, who plunges Natalia into the abyss of bright and risky adventures in search of love and happiness.
Sergei, always hanging out on business trips, dreams of being on a "desert island" with his beloved Masha. A pandemic that suddenly hit the world gives him this chance by locking his lovers at home in quarantine. “In a cage,” lovers, having gone through five stages of accepting the inevitable, are forced to get to know each other anew and accept themselves and the world around as it is. And everything would be fine if not for the invasion of aliens.
The shrill and tragic story about an event that involved Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. In an infantry regiment of the military based in the Tula region an offence occurs. In this regiment, the capital’s lieutenant Grigory Kolokoltsev — inspired by progressive ideas — does his service. A military tribunal and execution await the soldier charged with the offence. Kolokoltsev asks Count Tolstoy for help — and he decides to protect the innocent man. The pointed history about the complexity of choice and fidelity to one’s ideals is based on real events.
This story unites the destinies of the landowners and their servants, and is considered to be one of the most complete portraits of the Russian life in the late XIX century. It takes place in Dry Valley, a village owned by the noble family of Khrushevs. The story tells about Natalia, a young and naive girl who serves in their country house. We see and experience her love, dedication to her masters, mysticism, exile, betrayal and faith, while the Dry Valley is falling to pieces, slowly but inevitably, as well as the lives of its inhabitants.
The year is 1917. We are in the Russian countryside. It is the middle of freezing winter. A pale young, newly educated doctor arrives. Having to deal with one medical challenge after another he soon becomes the center of everyone's attention. To soothe the impressions of human suffering he turns to morphine.
Ilya lives in Moscow; Nina lives in St. Petersburg. Ilya has a beautiful wife and a daughter; Nina's husband is an artist, and they have a young son. Nina occasionally travels to Moscow to see her partners in the publishing industry. Ilya sometimes comes to St. Petersburg on business. But more often they are in the train between St. Petersburg and Moscow just to see each other. Because they have an affair.
