Outskirts of Moscow. A girl comes to an unfamiliar apartment to look after a dog. After a while, she realizes that the owner of the apartment has disappeared. She finds herself into a series of people that have been taking care of the dog for years in that same apartment, creating a weird community around this strange absence of the owner.
A sociological portrait of the United Kingdom after the historic Brexit vote of 2016. A funny, sometimes terrifying and non-judgemental look at the new populist politics sweeping western democracies.
An unremarkable episode from the life of a Russian aristocrat.
The grand constant flow of life
Following a mass emigration from Russia, a poignant love letter emerges in the abandoned home spaces of friends and family.
Caucasus, City of Cherkessk. Soslanov Sasha or how friends are used to call him Sos is never dejected. Expelled from the University, nowhere to spend the night, a love of life Nina leaving the city - it's all rubbish. Sos is loyal to his fortune. One day, out of boredom, Sasha desperately gambles an "Express" wage - the bet is starting to win. However, Sos has lost the money-receiving card and now he has only 3 days to find his "Express". Cherkessk Odyssey has begun.
The story of a hipster who has reached power, who has become the prefect of the fictional metropolitan area of Vostochnoe Medvedkovo. Finally, talking about tile, cycle paths and the rescue of old estates can be supported by real deeds! Or not?
The story of a Moscow based electronic musician Moa Pillar traveling to Nalchik, a small town located at Caucasus in the South of Russia, in order to meet Bulat Khalilov, a local music enthusiast who has started a field recording label that documents traditional Circassian music. Bulat connects Moa Pillar to the local music community, so that Moa can collaborate with folk musicians who represent the tradition deeply rooted in the history of the country and its inner struggles. The collaboration experiment reveals a clash between century-old traditions and modern culture of millennials and makes both heroes doubt the possibility of a dialogue between two worlds they represent.
Short film made in collaboration with the great composer Vladimir Martinov and the legendary Leonid Federov. As the musicians record their music time breaks down and the spirits of the past rise from the dead.
This is a story about a man and about a woman. Or rather, about male and about female. Two halves that search for each other and don’t coincide. He is an ordinary guy from a small mining town. She is a diva from the capital’s art world. Their meeting is accidental. Their relationship is doomed.
The demonstrators on the streets of Moscow in July 2019 want just one thing: fair elections. Despite their peaceful protest, 2,700 activists are arrested and hundreds are injured. The active camera places the viewer at the heart of the demonstrations, among the pushing and shoving of the chanting crowds. “You should be protecting us!” shouts a young woman at a soldier, and two big men come and take her away.
Sirens drone over the city, announcing a state of emergency involving “disturbance of the electromagnetic field”, while individuals clandestinely fiddle with soldered bits of leftover technology. The cyberpunk mode of dystopian science fiction did not end in the 1990s; thanks to the pandemic and other crises, it’s back – with a vengeance. Alexandra Karelina’s film, superbly shot by Egor Protsko, treats this genre in an experimental way, flashing cryptic images and offering bottomless scenarios of social breakdown.
In a post-soviet republic of Georgia, in South Caucasus where religious and folk traditions are still the main authority, new generation of pro-western youth tries to build their own future. The protest of 10 000 young Tbilisi citizens turns into 2 day massive rave at the Parliament of Georgia.
The police stop Anton Kuznetsov in the yard of his own house and here starts the journey of Antokha MC. One summer, one year or one friendship. Small stations from Vologda to Nizhny Novgorod, from a Russian EDM festival to an architecture exhibition in Kiev. Everything that made dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of people feel inspired with the art of this gawky, always smiling guy with a heavy backpack is not said out loud, but you can still feel it in each frame. Honesty, natural charisma, and kindness make Antokha MC not only the new hero of the music industry, but also a person, who is the main hero of this film.
Popular Russian rapper Husky experiences an existential crisis and faces difficult self-identity questions. To find the answers he comes to places where there are no borders between reality and fiction, becoming part of the game and speculation.
In Vladikavkaz, a town nestled in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, an Ossetian women's football team tackles traditional gender stereotypes by challenging a group of guys to a game. They'll prove once and for all that strength and hot tempers run through both the men and women of their culture.
For generations, the Salamanca community of Mennonites has been living in the same modest and rigidly organized way. Modern-day scenes are accompanied by a voice-over narrating a man’s recollections of his youth. “As soon as I close my eyes,” he explains, “I go back to the past, to the moment when I made the choice that shaped my entire life.” Speaking in the Plautdietsch language, he talks calmly of the strong curiosity he felt as a young boy about the world beyond Salamanca and the Mennonite faith – a curiosity for which he paid dearly.
A small town in Siberia is quarantined for several months. People are dying of a mysterious illness, the source of which lies hidden in the water. The survivors hide in their apartments, but the contaminated water flows through their homes. Self-defence groups and despondent loners hunting their own kind roam through the empty streets. In an attempt to save her mother’s life, the heroine ventures out into the unknown, so that she can overcome her fear and attempt to rekindle her relationship with the outside world, which is now humanity’s mortal enemy.
