Example of Intonation

From 1961 to 1995, Alexander Sokurov kept a personal diary, recording both important events and everyday trivia. Now these candid recordings are taking on a new life in a large-scale five-hour documentary, intertwined with footage from iconic films of that era. This is not just the autobiography of a famous director, but a personal look at the history of the second half of the 20th century, full of reflections and observations.

A teenage soldier in World War I—a simple village boy with a naive youthful dream of fame and medals—throws himself into the unknown and goes blind in the first battle, thus taking on a new job: intercepting enemy planes by listening to the air through huge metal funnels.

1998, Nalchik. A Jewish family is in trouble: the youngest son and his bride do not come home, and in the morning, a ransom note arrives. The ransom is so high that the family is forced not only to sell its small business, but also to seek help from its fellow tribesmen.

Sofichka returns to her native Abkhaz village in Georgia after twenty years of absence. Seeing again home and meeting with villagers take her to memory lane and all Sofichka’s life passes before her eyes: her wedding with Rufus, betrayal of the neighbour Nuri, difficult years of war, exile in Siberia. But in spite of everything, in spite of all the tough experiences, Sofichka continues to believe in people and in life, staying true to the memory of her husband who died young.

A civil and artistic statement about those who determined the fate of the planet: Stalin, Churchill, Mussolini, Hitler, according to a Russian newspaper.

In a small Chechen village, Yaha spends her days with Madina, with whom she is very close. Both girls dream of leaving their homes after graduation and escaping to the real world, far from their village. Yaha’s older sister Heda also dreams of being free, but the price for this is very high - if she decides to try for a divorce, her only son will be taken away from her, such are the traditions in her culture. Will Yaha, Madina and Heda succeed to get free, and at what cost?

Ever since he was a child, Dmitry was finding soldiers that went missing during the World War II, keeping their memory alive. Now he immortalizes the lost soldiers as sculptures, frozen in battle. What did they fight for? Why did they come back into this wretched world?

Tembot's dream is to be needed, and, finally, to take his place at least in someone's heart. But in the coveted maternal, there is not even a corner for him, because because of the resemblance to her father, she rejects him over and over again. He is also excluded from the heart of a close friend - he sets him up in a big way. There is no place for an insensitive father, whom he misses. This pain gives him a new beginning...

Video version of the dramatic dystopian performance staged by Alexander Sokurov in Vicenza, on the stage of the world's oldest theater Teatro Olimpico. The plot is based on a free interpretation of the works of I. A. Brodsky, which tells about two characters doomed to life imprisonment.

The youngest son returns home to help his father and brothers meet the targets for a profitable order on cut wood. During his absence nothing has changed: the same back-breaking toil for the sake of a piece of bread, the same resistance from the neighbouring settlement, the same inability of the family members to express their love and understanding for their kin. And the river, which may rise at any time and wash away the parental home that stands on its banks.

The "To Stumble" comedy is based on "Death of an Official" story by Anton Chekhov. Trying to catch the ironic intonation of the writer, in whom the comedic side by side with the tragic, the director blurs the boundaries of time and talks about the present day.

The first Chechen war broke Russia in the mid-nineties. The war was lost, the country and the army was damaged. The recovery turned out to be incredibly difficult. Former soldiers - veterans of the famous "Wild Brigade" - cope with this trauma as best they can. For example, with their own hands and at their own expense, they decide to build a monument to fallen comrades at the gates of their long-abandoned military unit. Over and over again, they remind themselves of what they have experienced, not understanding how to break out of this vicious circle of war memories that still determine their whole life. A vicious circle in which not only a person can get lost, but the whole country can get lost by repeating the history and unleashing senseless wars.

The film was shot in the period from spring to winter 2021 in the vicinity of the village of Luzhitsy, which is located in the west of the Leningrad region. It was during this period that the natural and social landscape of these places began to change catastrophically due to the grandiose industrial development. The situation especially affects the Volga region, a small people with a thousand-year history who survived wars, revolutions and the Stalinist era.

Zhenya is the head of the weather station, Vanya is a junior meteorologist and household assistant. The ship "Mikhail Somov" comes to the Kanin Peninsula once a year, delivers food - and then the heroes are left alone until next spring. One day a storm comes to them - and the heroes are left without communication, alone, alone with bad weather and each other for 3 long days.

Pskov province, 1921. Stepka is painting Daddy's portrait. The whole hut has already been painted with charcoal. And why does Proshka's mother love him, the foster child? After the war, there are no men in the village, the whole household is on her shoulders. And Styopka only draws, he can't even bring firewood — he'll stumble, fall. His own son does everything himself and the more he grins at the adopted child. Stepka... he is not of this world — he resurrects his father.

The film tells the story of a teenager Kolya, who, after the death of his mother, finds himself in the village with his grandmother. There they are looking forward to the return of Kolya's father. However, the father does not come, and Kolya and his brother Vanya go to look for him.

Alexander and Ivan are sound engineers; a rattling train took them to Transbaikalia. They thought that this would be another expedition, that they would record the necessary surrounding sounds and, having done their job, would return home. Their main goal was to record in the Marble Gorge, a rotting camp hidden deep in the mountains, a fragment of the Gulag. But what they heard and recorded was not at all what they expected. Everything around them that had seemed inanimate, gone, suddenly began to acquire its own voice.

11-year old Sashka is spending his summer at his grandma's together with his elder brother, and they both happen to fall for the same girl.

Sergei is seven years old. He believes in Batman. Not wanting to discuss the tragedy that happened in the family, Sergei's older brother, Misha, starts playing superhero in real life. The brothers create their own world, incomprehensible to others. But can the game last forever?

He was arrested on the night of December 2 to 3, 1934. It's amazing, even 3 hours ago he was hotly arguing with the film's director Abram Room, how to play the key scene of the film "Strict Young Man"! The damned phrase about suffering and mercy did not work out in any way... Mercy and justice, now Dmitry Konsovsky will have to rely only on them. Yesterday he was the leading actor of the studio "Mezhrabpom-film", who has a dozen films on his account, the performer of the main role in the new film "Strict Young Man", an artist of the Vakhtangov Theater, today he is a prisoner of the Butyrskaya prison. His brother, the artist Alexey Konsovsky, died in 1991, but he could not get permission to get acquainted with his brother's investigative case, did not find out what his last words were. Now, 70 years later, Alexey Konsovsky's grandson, Nikolai Vershinin-Konsovsky, will tell us about all the dramatic events.