Andrey Smirnov

The Acolyte

After losing his parents in the war, the boy ended up in an orphanage, from which he escaped and was taken in by a village teacher. Following in the footsteps of his tutor, Valya Kandaurov graduated from the Pedagogical Institute and began working in a rural school. And then a girl from the city where he was studying came to Vale and invited him to follow her. But neither his career nor the joys of a comfortable life brought him satisfaction and he returned to his homeland.

War and Peace

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

His Wife's Diary

A tragic story of love and loneliness - this is the unknown life of the great Russian writer Ivan Bunin. The confused love story that involved Bunin, his wife Vera, the young poet Galina Plotnikova, opera singer Marga Kovtun and literary man Leonid Gurov. A work of great honesty and piercing psychology.

Elena

After suffering from a heart attack, a wealthy elderly Russian man plans to will most of his estate to his estranged daughter, but his titular wife has other plans.

Two Days

A two days from the life of Pyotr Drozdov, a highly ranked official from Moscow, which he spends with young museum employee Masha.

War and Peace, Part I: Andrei Bolkonsky

In 1805 St. Petersburg, Pierre Bezukhov, illegitimate son of a rich nobleman, is introduced to high society. His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, joins the Imperial Russian Army as aide-de-camp of General Mikhail Kutuzov in the War of the Third Coalition against General Napoleon Bonaparte. Part one of the four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel.

The Music of Love: Beethoven's Secret Love

The year is 1817. Minon, a five-year-old girl, leaves her aunt Therese of Brunswick, who has raised her like a mother since her birth, to go and live with her parents, the Count and Countess von Stakelberg. One day, Gabrielle, her housekeeper, who is no longer in her right mind, reveals that her real father is the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Twenty years later, still intrigued by this confession, Minon decides to unravel the mystery of her origins. She returns to the place of her early childhood, hoping to find the truth with her aunt, who was for years the faithful friend of the great composer.

Keep Forever

Diplomat Volodin is going to work in the States for a responsible job. But, having crossed the ocean, he immediately went over to the Americans. And not empty-handed: he calls the American embassy from a pay phone and gives the appearance of a Soviet intelligence officer. The traitor is sure that he will not be identified “by the phone's strangled voice. There can be no such technology. But, on the instructions of the Chekists, such a technique was developed in Marfino's "sharashka" near Moscow by convict engineers and scientists.

How Viktor "The Garlic" Took Alexey "The Stud" to the Nursing Home

Viktor spends his free time trawling bars with ladies of questionable repute, from where he is picked up by a wife he doesn’t love, the mother of a child they never planned. Viktor himself was abandoned by his own father, his mother then committed suicide, and he was left to grow up in an orphanage. Years later, his errant dad returns, now a disabled felon, and Viktor discovers a timely legacy is in the offing – his father’s apartment. The documentation for securing dad’s move into an old people’s home is signed in a flash. Nevertheless, the only one that can take him is miles away and, what’s more, the invalid starts to recuperate during the journey, which is when their real problems begin.

Persona non grata

A Polish ambassador finds his life falling into ruin following the death of his wife.

Love Story

Taxi driver and unsuccessful actor Seva Gorelov accidentally meets his first love Masha Sokolova, once a young and carefree girl, and now a thirty-year-old spoiled kept woman. Seva works part-time in a taxi, and Masha accidentally becomes his client. To go far, to Sochi, to their homeland with Seva teenage love. Masha has a wedding there in a few days, but not with Seva, of course, but with a rich patron. From the very beginning it becomes clear that this journey will not end with anything good. 1600 kilometers of adventure, well flavored with humor, ambition, tears, resentment, flirting, passion and a great feeling, which again is out of place.

The Girl and the Bugler

It is a story about 12 or 13 years old girl in the middle of 60-th in USSR. She is a pioneer. She is in love with her pioneer leader - 16-17 years old boy, who doesn't even notice her. In order to impress him she tries to find someone, who was a member of pioneer squad in 1923 - one of the first Soviet pioneers...

Gisele's Mania

A detective-dramatic chronicle of love adventures of the famous Russian ballerina Olga Spesivtseva, nicknamed by contemporaries Red Giselle. It was Giselle who immortalized her name in 1924. It was "Giselle" that caused the psychic catastrophe in 1942.

Nine Days of One Year

Two young scientists are exploring new fields of nuclear physics. Dmitry Gusev and Ilya Kulikov are good friends, but rivals in love. Dmitry marries Lyolya and they live happily together. Luck has it that he makes an important discovery. Unfortunately he exposes himself to radioactivity during the experiments. As a result he falls seriously ill. However Dmitry has a strong spirit. His will to live, the deep passion for his work and his strong love for mankind makes it possible for him to recover.

My Favorite Clown

Film is based on the eponymous book by V. Livanov. About a boy, who is adopted by the divorced man.

The White Sun of the Desert

The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town...

The Tolstoy Defence

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.

Khagi – Tragger

According to ancient legend, the artist found a mineral that can revive any inanimate thing. To hide the mineral, he inserts it into a doll named Hagi. A century later, Hagi falls into the hands of a puppeteer, and he with horror discovers that the old doll is alive. Moreover, she also has a nasty character. Criminals try to take possession of it in order to use it for mercenary purposes. But they do not know the secrets of this doll - no one can take possession of it, but it has a destructive effect on any person who falls within its influence.

Chernov/Chernov

The strange title is explained by the fact that there are two films in the film: one is about a real day in the life of the real Moscow architect Alexander Petrovich Chernov, his mental crisis; and the other is Chernov’s fiction. There is a different fate, a different country, a different life. It is into this very life that Chernov strives to get into - and for the sake of a trip to Spain he will have to commit betrayal. There, for a moment, the doubles will be nearby and both will be on the verge of death. Who will die in the spring of 1978?

Idiot Dreams

The ice has broken, gentlemen of the jury! New time requires a new image of the Turkish national Ostap Bender. He still selflessly loves money. As in the days of the NEP, his big blue dream remains white pants and distant Rio de Janeiro. His methods of achieving the goal are still the same - honest taking money from citizens.

The Red Arrow

The Red Arrow is the special train No.1 between Leningrad and Moscow. The film is set in the 1980s during perestroika in the Soviet Union. Kropotov (Lavrov) is communist CEO of a big industrial company in Leningrad. He is crafty and successful in getting a major order from the Soviet Government; building an automated assembly line. But his style of management clashes with his subordinates, talented engineers. Their potential is strangled by Kropotov's manipulative control. The government order is not accomplished and Kropotov gets fired. He is rethinking his outdated business style while on the train No.1 to Moscow.

Sodankylä Forever

The Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the arctic circle — where the sun never sets. Founded by Aki and Mika Kaurismäki along with Anssi Mänttäri and Peter von Bagh in 1985, the festival has played host to an international who’s who of directors and each day begins with a two-hour discussion. To mark the festival’s silver anniversary, festival director Peter von Bagh edited together highlights from these dialogues to create an epic four-part choral history of cinema drawn from the anecdotes, insights, and wisdom of his all-star cast: Coppola, Fuller, Forman, Chabrol, Corman, Demy, Kieslowski, Kiarostami, Varda, Oliveira, Erice, Rouch, Gilliam, Jancso — and 64 more. Ranging across innumerable topics (war, censorship, movie stars, formative influences, America, neorealism) these voices, many now passed away, engage in a personal dialogue across the years that’s by turns charming, profound, hilarious and moving.

Empire V

In modern-day Moscow, disaffected former journalism student Roman follows a cryptic invitation to join “the elite” and finds himself forcibly transformed into a vampire. But not your typical creature of the night. Thanks to a parasitical worm known as the Tongue, Roman (now called Rama) has become part of a ruling class of vampires who exercise an “anonymous dictatorship” over humans based not on a thirst for blood but the hunger for money. As various instructors school him in the ways of their elite breed, and Rama explores his new supernatural abilities, he begins a tentative relationship with another newly turned vampire, Hera. His desire for more knowledge about this intoxicating new world also leads him into potentially deadly conflict with Mithra, his mentor who becomes his nemesis.

North Rainbow

The movie is dedicated to the liberation of Eastern Armenia in 1827.