Tatyana Ivanova

Alesha Popovich has to catch Tugarin Zmey and bring back the stolen money with the help of a talking Horse (which talks all the time and has an opinion on everything), a wise granny, a donkey and a beauty Lyubava.

Film devoted to director Sergei Parajanov. The film is designed as a confession of the director. There are pictures of various episodes of his life, while shooting, at his home, in prison... The commentary comes in the form of a monologue consisting of excerpts from letters, notes and scripts of his unfinished film The Confession.

Uma bruxa planeja conquistar o mundo, mas para tanto precisa da ajuda do garoto Jacob. Ele, filho de um humilde sapateiro, se recusa a ajudar a bruxa, que está disfarçada como uma bela senhora. Irritada, a bruxa lança uma maldição ao garoto, que o transforma em um anão feito e com um enorme nariz, além de deixá-lo preso no castelo por 7 anos. Quando finalmente consegue sair de sua prisão, Jacob retorna à sua casa mas descobre que a vida que tinha mudou drasticamente. Seu pai morrera de tristeza e sua mãe não mais o reconhecia. Porém, quando Jacob salva um ganso, descobre que ele é na verdade uma princesa, que também foi enfeitiçada pela bruxa. Eles então se unem para desfazer os feitiços que os afligem.

This is the second installment of a three-part series of autobiographical films about the director's life. The first, which won various awards for its maker, was entitled Zamri Oumi Voskresni and was later retitled Zari, Umri, Vokresni ("Freeze-Die-Come to Life"). At the end of that film, set at the conclusion of World War II, the young Valerka was striving hard to overcome the inertia of just getting by, along with his sometime friend Galiya. In this one, he is adjusting to Galiya's death and is back in school and is living with his mother, a prostitute. After a girl at the school is found to have been gang-raped, the headmaster chooses Valerka to be one of the scapegoats, though he had nothing to do with the deed. The punishment seems mild enough, he was simply expelled from school. However, after quarrelling with his mother about the incident, he takes to the road, and discovers a society so bleak, degraded and hopeless that it is a wonder he remained alive.

This lavish Soviet/Czech co-production is based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous novel, The Gambler, which tells the story of a Russian living in Germany, in a gambling resort. This film is set at the turn of the century, and was filmed in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Czechoslovakia. Played by Nikolai Burlyayev, the gambler succumbs completely to his addiction, using up every resource he has (human, spiritual and financial) in his wagering, finally becoming a rootless drifter.