Moscow, January 1996. Boris Yeltsin gets ready to run for a second mandate of the presidency of the young Russian Federation. Polls are in the single digits. A painful economic transition, war in Chechnya, and the rise of criminal groups have left the majority of Russians dissatisfied with Yeltsin… and willing to vote for the communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. Yet six months later, Yeltsin won the election with nearly 54% of the vote. How did that happen?
The film tells about the most difficult period in the modern history of Russia - from the late 1980s and the "era of change" to the crisis end of the noughties - through the prism of people who made the most important economic decisions. But this is not a dry enumeration of facts, but an accurate and even unexpected portrait of economists who managed to keep an entire country from financial collapse, and in the center of this group portrait is Alexey Kudrin.
Em 2000, quando Vladmir Putin foi o presidente em exercício da Rússia com a saída repentina de Boris Yeltsin, candidatos tiveram três meses de campanha para uma nova eleição da presidência. Ao invés das táticas de campanha comuns, ele contratou o cineasta Vitaly Mansky para acompanhá-lo para um documentário para TV. Anos depois, Mansky retorna às imagens que ele captou naquele ano e constrói uma nova perspectiva sobre uma figura que se tornou tão decisiva para a política internacional, refletindo sobre o que permitiu que Putin consolidasse seu poder.
Uma história pungente e trágica sobre eventos dos quais o próprio conde Liev Nikolaevitch Tolstói é um participante. O tenente da capital, Grigory Kolokoltsev, inspirado por ideias avançadas, é enviado para servir em um regimento de infantaria, no qual ocorre um crime de guerra. O soldado, sobre cujos ombros recai a culpa, enfrenta um tribunal militar. Kolokoltsev pede ajuda ao conde Tolstói, que decide proteger os inocentes. Uma história comovente sobre a complexidade das escolhas e a lealdade aos próprios ideais. Baseada em eventos reais.
After the father’s death, the daughter of one of the forefathers of modern Russian democracy, Ksenia Sobchak, tries to understand the 18 years of his political fate. Together with the director Vera Krichevskaya she gives the word to Anatoli Sobchak’s colleagues and opponents, gets acquainted with the criminal case which annulled his career, and tries to find an answer to the question what Anatoly Sobchak’s fate would be in today’s Russia.
Khodorkovsky, the richest Russian, challenges President Putin. A fight of the titans begins. Putin warns him. But Khodorkovsky comes back to Russia knowing that he will be imprisoned, once he returns. When I heard about it, I asked myself: why didn't he stay in exile with a couple of billions? Why did he do that? A personal journey to Khodorkovsky.
