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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 82 movies from M. Razbezhkina and M. Ugarov Academy
Fly-on-the-wall documentary on the day-to-day life of Evgeniy Alyokhin, russian poet and musician, and his girlfrend Oksana.
Dec 2012
Viktor Ryzhakov takes charge of the Sovremennik theatre after the death of Galina Volchek, who led the troupe for almost half a century and enjoyed absolute authority. For the theatre’s first new production, the new artistic director chooses a play about a family whose members have ceased to understand each other. While working on the play, the director and actors become more and more like the characters in the future production, and find it increasingly difficult to find mutual understanding within their “theatrical family.”
Oct 2023
There are those who follow the course of time. As in Soviet times, they adjust the accuracy of the clock in the astronomical institute every day. The clock runs fast, then slow, and we are left to wonder exactly what time we live in.
Apr 2018
Sep 2013
Ten director graduates from Marina Razbezhkina’s School of Documentary Film and Documentary Theatre lived with a camera for two months in order to chronicle the last “Russian winter” and its popular uprising against Vladimir Putin’s presidential run. People, faces, conversations, protests, failures and triumphs come together to chronicle the campaign.
Aug 2012
A provincial Russian family killed off by suicide, murder and manslaughter and a boy who asks about guilt and forgiveness in the midst of all this squalor. Shockingly great.
Sep 2011
Two people are on the road. Everyday life, business calls, games, a curve of the highway, a swing and again business calls... During this year the father and the daughter have not seen much of each other and they have not been alone for a long time. Two cameras are looking face to face; different fears inhabit one and the same space. There is a question: should they come back or should they continue traveling together?
Jun 2014
They say that if a daughter looks like a father, then she will certainly be happy. But what if you look like a person whom you have never seen in your life? And all you know about him is speculation, fantasy and a small bronze figure.
Dec 2019
In the circus tent „Joy” the same thing happens every day – they dismantle and assemble the tent with a dome full of stars, give performances, and move on to the next place. Lynx and parrot trainers quarrel over every little thing, and Valera the clown always performs alone. Until one day a new partner joins him, the clown Yana, and he starts to dream about conquering the world of the circus together with her.
Oct 2020
It takes 20 minutes on foot to get from the town of Nikola-Lenivets to the village of Zvizzhi. Nikola-Lenivets is the site of Arkhstoyaniye, a most fashionable festival of landscape objects. Zviszhi is the place where Val'ka, Lyudka, Zhen'ka and a sixty-year-old "dolly" Natasha live. Natasha lives with Valerka, a guy who served a term for murder because he knows how to fix electric wires. Valerka prefers to pass his nights with Zhen'ka. Val'ka was once Lyudka's kindergarten teacher; now they spend time together in a vegetable garden drinking denatured alcohol. "Fashionable" festival people and "degraded" Zviszhi people never heard about each other. But one day, village people decide to go visit their neighbors during the festival...
Dec 2014
Russian photographer Maksim Dmitriev liked reality, and in the beginning of the 20 century, he photographed bums, workers, farmers, bankers, and monks. Hundred yours later we showed these photographs to nowadays heroes. And they recognized each other.
Oct 2013
"Ata" is translated from Kazakh as "grandfather". The story of the 80-year-old blind grandfather was filmed in the south of Kazakhstan.
Jun 2011
Novorzhev is a small town in the Pskov region. After six in the evening, its streets are empty, and it seems that life in this place has stopped. But she is in full swing at the House of Culture, where local residents rehearse the play based on a play by a Spanish playwright. The heroes poison each other, try to shoot their relatives, die writhing in convulsions - and at some point it is no longer clear where life is and where is the theater.
Sep 2019
Summer 2010. The entire central part of Russia is engulfed in fires. The authors of the films of the almanac together with the volunteers go to the epicenter of events. Volunteers, foresters, firefighters – they are not heroes in the usual sense of the word, it was just their life, their trouble, and they tried to cope with it as best they could.
May 2011
Seven years ago Svetlana bought a large farm with land and cattle, sold all her business in the city and left alone for 200 km from Moscow. To do a new thing.
My grandmother is 96 years old. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina, and became an engineer. I made this film because I wanted to understand who she really is, but instead I understood a little about myself.
Sep 2018
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.
Nov 2021
What is going to happen if the painting of the great Dutch artist suddenly comes to life in a half-abandoned Russian village?
Oct 2018
Two different worlds. On the one hand - porters, who bear pianos. On the other hand - people, who the porters visit – musicians, new Russian “middle class”. What is the dialog between them? How does it clear for each of them - what is the musical instrument for?
Jun 2010
Last road in the ambulance. The driver - a cheerful Armenian - comes to those who can no longer be helped and becomes for them a guide between life and death. The road, meanwhile, shines with bright lights, erodes in an abstract pattern, yells with sirens. There is an inexorable countdown.