Alexey Sashin

New Year is a kind of milestone, the moment of summing up, making decisions. New Year is a new beginning, time to dream, make wishes and wait for miracles ... While all of Moscow is buying up gifts and decorating Christmas trees, Denis is desperately trying to manage to open the bar by December 31 and prove his worth to his father. Irina is more and more immersed in work, trying not to notice either the decorated office, or the approaching holidays, or her own loneliness. Nastya is a first-year student, all alone in a strange Moscow, misses her mother, works in a cafe and, smiling with all her strength, brings people joy and coffee. Sveta is Snegurochka, and to whom, how could she not be happy about the New Year and give others a festive mood, but she’s not going smoothly either: her beloved husband is completely immersed in the world of computer games and does not notice either his son, or Sveta, or reality.

In modern Romania, there is an old Russian village with the Turkish name of Sariköy. For over 300 years, Russian Old Believers have lived there, whose ancestors once fled Russia to save their faith from the new church reform of Patriarch Nikon in the second half of the 17th century. How do these people manage to preserve the Russian spirit in themselves for so many centuries, far from Russia? What do they consider their homeland: the country where they were born, or the one that is in each person’s soul? And what is a homeland? Residents of the village of Sariköy reflect on these and other topics.

A story of love between a young soldier Sergey and a fellow officer Anna.

In 1945, a unique, priceless relic made of pure gold — the so‑called “yellow dragon” — disappeared from a Chinese monastery. Today, the rare artifact is discovered in Russia. To get hold of the valuable artifact and return it to its homeland, a Chinese monk and wushu master, Wang, and Kumiko, a beautiful representative of the yakuza, set off for Moscow. In a foreign country, they encounter world karate champion Fyodor Prokhorov and the Moscow mafia, Phil, a fan of Moscow Dynamo, Spartak fans, an antique dealer who is passionate about his work, and many others. Each encounter with Russians, who are so different, will amaze the foreign “delegates,” but will they ultimately manage to get back what they came to our city for?

Sergei leads the ordinary life of an ordinary family man with a small business, but through a fatal combination of circumstances he becomes the target of killers. His last words seem to suggest an unexpected recognition, after which he is ready to carry out the lethal shot. Apparently we all have something to confess before death, and sometimes it is more difficult to live with it than die.