Known for Acting
This detective story begins with an article in Ogonyok magazine about Soviet naval officers who were awarded the highest British award, the Order of the Star of the Sea, during World War II. After reading the article, the young heroine of the film named Olga, a resident of a small seaside town, realizes that one of these orders is kept on the mezzanine of her modest apartment, in a shoe box.
Todorovsky's film examines life in a provincial Russian town (that is too small to even appear on the map) just outside of Stalingrad during the famous WWII Battle. This is NOT a traditional war film, and the epic events of the battle take place almost entirely off screen. Instead, Todorovsky outlines a crude love triangle between three young people caught up in the harsh Russian winter. The stark winter settings, and the characters' struggle for survival, are what make this film one worth watching.
Historical period melodrama.
Lilya (Marina Zubanova) is an approaching-middle-age singleton who lives with and cares for her grandfather and works at a chicken factory. She is determined to get married soon, but hasn’t quite found the man for the job. Most of the story revolves around various failed dates, her conversations with coworkers and family members, and her innocent stalking of a talented local pianist.
After Polina, a mother of six, loses her husband, who went to jail for stealing charcoal and was killed when he tried to escape, she stays behind without any support. To be able to survive, Polina and her family start a folk group. But soon she understands that her children deserve a better fate, and she takes the desperate decision to steal a plane and go abroad... Fifteen years later, Polina is released from prison and finds out that fate has scattered her children all over the country: one is in the army, another is a miner in the Donbass, and the oldest, Lyonchik, who used to be in a mental institution, now pretends to be insane. Polina gathers all of her sons to free their older brother from the psychiatric hospital...
A handful of farmers protect their farm from bandits.
Life changes for a Moscow worker when he's made Stalin's personal film projectionist but cannot tell his bride.
At first they bullied her for a long time and in a sophisticated way. Then they killed her. In the courtroom, it became clear to her father that there was no evidence against the bastards and he would have to decide the trial himself...
This film is of interest primarily because it contains within it the entire surviving footage of an unfinished 1974 film by the same director, Slave of Love, which was successfully remade shortly thereafter by another director, Nikita Mikhalkov.The "cover" story is about a woman (Jeanne Moreau) newly released from prison camps in the 1940s back into Russian society, who finds that there is no place for her in the world she has come back to. However, this painterly film is so filled with striking and surreal imagery that it would be misleading to say that the story is of any great importance in relation to that.
A lonely old man lives in the village - Ivan Makarov, angry and prickly. All his wealth is a house and an accordion. Yes, there is still a dream - to go to Moscow and speak on television: what if the son, who has long forgotten about him, sees and responds? But in Moscow, instead of his son, he finds a homeless teenager, Sergei, nicknamed "The Hoop". Returning together to Ivan's native village, they do not realize that life is preparing them another test to test true male friendship, fortitude and stamina in overcoming any blows of fate.
The tragic story of the life of revolutionary and romantic Nikolai Bukharin and his failed attempt to refute the charges against him. In parallel with the trial of Nikolai Bukharin, the whole life of this amazing man, who was ready to die for his ideals, flies before us.
