Alla Demidova

Alla Demidova ranks among the greatest actresses to have graced the Russian-language stage over the past six decades, as well as screens big and small. She's famous for her tragic characters. Perhaps because she, above all, understands the world as a realm of worries and sorrow?

Crimea, 1787. Despite the Manifesto of the Russian Empress Catherine and the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi peace treaty, which forever united Crimea with Russia, Europe continues to weave intrigues, trying to break this sacred union. In the undercover struggle, all methods were used - from shameless gossip, dark rumors and false articles in newspapers to dirty manipulations with the illegitimate son of the empress sent to Europe for training - Alexei Bobrinsky, a passionate gambler and brawler. This weakness was cleverly exploited by international intriguers. Catherine instructs her faithful friends, the midshipmen, to cut the knot of the conspiracy ... Together with the fathers, their grown-up children, Shurka and Alexandra, go into battle.

Based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's In a Grove, story takes place during the times of Tsar Alexander II. A lady-in-waiting tells the Emperor in his bedroom a metaphysical story about a 13th century prince who is killed in the woods under mysterious circumstances. Fairy tale characters who have witnessed the terrible death, all share their version of the events, gradually shedding light on what really happened.

A woman is paid a surprise visit by her long-forgotten classmate, who needs her advice: should he choose a wife or a lover? An outrageously burlesque mise-en-scène is repeated many times but each time in a different place and performed by new actors. Why?

In the spring of 2017, the Investigation Committee conducted the first searches in the criminal case, which everyone now knows as the “Serebrennikov case”, “the Seventh Studio case” or “The Platform case”. Six people, among whom is a world-famous director, are accused of having stolen more than one hundred million rubles allocated for staging performances from the state. And for this they can go to jail for 10 years. Journalists Katerina Gordeeva and Roman Super tried to figure out the essence of this matter. We talked to people who know what theater is, including in terms of money. Studied financial documents. Communicated with those with whom no one had ever succeeded. They understood why the applause of the audience and the compliments of the Ministry of Culture turned into arrests. And of course, went to all court sessions.

From Alla Demidova's book "Akhmatova Mirrors": "When I began to decipher the "Poem without a hero", the more I found doubles in it, which, in turn, bifurcated and so on — to infinity (the same thing happens if you approach the wall of the mirror hall with a mirror and see in it an infinite a series of reflections), the more clearly I understood that it was probably not necessary to literally decipher it. Specific persons are not so important in the "Poem", the fragrance of time is important, because, among other things, a huge layer of culture of an entire epoch has entered into the "Poem", which for many young people today has become a long-past history."

A young piano tuner befriends two rich old-ladies, and plots, with the help of his girlfriend, to betray their trust and steal from them.

The film is dedicated to the tragic fate of the outstanding theater director, founder of the famous Chamber Theater Alexander Tairov. Tairov's performances "Princess Brambilla", "Phaedra", "Love under the Elms", "Optimistic Tragedy" have gained worldwide fame. In 1949, during the so-called struggle against cosmopolitans, Tairov was released from the leadership of the Chamber Theater, the theater was renamed. Unable to withstand this blow, shocked by the betrayal of the actors he raised, crushed by the harassment of the press, Tairov died a year later in a psychiatric clinic...

The mistress of a once prosperous, but now frustrated estate, wants to improve her affairs at the expense of neighboring possessions belonging to the rich widow Evlampia Kupavina. The lady hatches an ingenious plan using forged documents in order to marry her wayward nephew Apollosha to the widow.

Charming young Olga marries a successful businessman. It is surrounded by luxury and well-being. A wealthy husband is ready to fulfill any whim of a beautiful wife. Olga is an airy woman who is fond of doing herbariums, sewing dolls, reciting poems to servants and loves her oligarch husband very much.

A two-part documentary about the fraught relationship between Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky and émigré linguist Roman Jakobson.

At the heart of the picture is a common legend about the last days of Emperor Alexander the First Blessed.

The film is set in 1890s London. Sarah lived happily in India with her father, but when he was drafted into military service he placed Sarah in a boarding school in London. Sarah was lonely, but she made some good friends at school. Suddenly her father was announced dead in a mine accident and Sarah became an orphan. Now she goes on a long and dangerous journey to find her father, who loved her and called her a "little princess".

No synopsis available yet.

An animated film in two parts, about the tragic fate of Estonian artist Ülo Sooster and about his work.

The second part of the duology on the famous Estonian artist Ülo Sooster continues his life story, paying homage to many other great artists who were spiritually consonant with his work.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1981 Soviet film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was the third installment in the TV series about adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. A potent streak of humour ran through the film as concerns references to traditional British customs and stereotypes, ensuring the film's popularity with several generations of Russophone viewers. Other features of this best entry in the series include excellent exterior shots which closely match the novel's setting in the Dartmoor marshland, as well as an all-star cast: in addition to the famous Livanov -Solomin duo as Holmes and Watson, the film stars the internationally acclaimed actor/director Nikita Mikhalkov as Sir Henry Baskerville and the Russian movie legend Oleg Yankovsky as the villain Stapleton.

A revelatory discussion on a train. Based on Leo Tolstoy's novel of the same name.

The second part of the Soviet TV adaption.

Hermann is an officer of the engineers in the Imperial Russian Army. He constantly watches the other officers gamble, but never plays himself. One night, Tomsky tells a story about his grandmother, an elderly countess. Many years ago, in France, she lost a fortune at cards, and then won it back with the secret of the three winning cards, which she learned from the notorious Count of St. Germain. Hermann becomes obsessed with obtaining the secret.

The young hero's father, a famous test pilot, dies in an airplane crash. But comes the first deep feeling for the girl Tanya - and the hero finds the courage to overcome this seemingly intolerable grief. The action takes place in the fifties.

Falling Star is based on three stories by the contemporary Russian writer Viktor Astafyev and centers on a young soldier on the front lines who is wounded and taken to the hospital. Once there, he muses about his childhood and a little girl he had loved - someone who could easily have grown up to be the nurse that is attending to him now. As he recuperates, he and the nurse fall in love and he very much wants to marry her. At this point, the nurse's mother comes for a visit and advises him against such an action because if they were to marry and he were subsequently killed or maimed in action - the fighting is still close to the hospital - the nurse would suffer much more than if he just left her alone. Now it is up to the soldier to make a decision one way or the other.

When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead in his country house, Dr James Mortimer asks Sherlock Holmes for help to save Sir Henry Baskerville, the only known heir, from the curse that haunts Baskerville family.

The heroine of the film is a young attractive woman whose motto is “you need to become depraved to feel like a saint.” She is convinced that men who love her should easily accept her for who she is. But it only causes them pain...

Based on Anna Ahmatova's translation of Korean poem about eternal love.

A drama from the life of two generations of a big family from Leningrad. Loosely based on a novel by Yuriy Nagibin.

Blending drawings, paintings, filmed interviews, and recorded testimony, this animation-documentary hybrid tells of the tragic fate of the Estonian artist Ülo Sooster.

A story from the life in the beginning of XX century based on the theater play by Maxim Gorky.

The poems of Alexander Blok are read by Alla Demidova and Vladimir Simonov.

Pushkin and Puschin met at the Tsarskoye Selo Lycee. After the Decembrist revolt of 1825, Puschin was exiled to Siberia while Pushkin was allowed to return and later supported the Tsar. Despite the distance, their friendship endured through letters and poetry.

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Based on the novel by Charles de Coster "The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak, and their Adventures Heroical, Joyous and Glorious in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere." First part: "The Ashes of Claes". XVI century. The freedom-loving and cheerful people of the Netherlands under the rule of the Spanish king: persecution, torture, bonfires of the Inquisition, encouraging scammers. The fearless Thyl Uhlenshpiegel and his faithful girlfriend Nele have to go through many trials. Second part: "Viva Beggars!". The people of the Netherlands, tormented by cruel royal decrees, taxes, heresy, torture and executions, began a war of liberation against Spanish rule. Many feats will be performed by the national hero Tilbert (Thyl) Ulenspiegel and his friend Lamme Gudzak before peace returns to their homeland.

The film is dedicated to the great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). It tells of the last twenty years of the great master’s life, of his friendship with Baroness von Meck, an outstanding woman of her time, who for many years was Tchaikovsky’s guardian angel. The film also includes retrospections of the composer’s childhood and adolescent years, with Tchaikovsky’s life poetically recounted against the background of fragments from his operas and ballets performed by the best Russian musicians.

A merchant is living in a fairytale Russia of hundreds of years ago. When he is making a journey to market, his three daughters each ask for a present to be brought back...

A story of Igor Kurchatov - a father of Soviet nuclear weapons.

Prince Stepan Kasatsky is an officer, an ardent, proud young man, and a big fan of the tsar. Kasatsky is going to marry, but at the last moment he learns from the bride that she was the mistress of the emperor. The prince is deeply disappointed in social life, he takes a monastic vow and leaves the capital. Faith in God was to save the soul, but passions and worldly temptations don't leave Kasatsky.

Pyotr, a once-promising neurosurgeon who left his groundbreaking research and career abroad, returns home years later in search of fulfillment. Encountering old friends, strained relationships, and the realities of his choices, Pyotr grapples with regret, identity, and the value of his work.

Pavel Pavlovich Goryaev is not that young of an actor. For many years he plays in the provincial theater in leading roles. The director of a play based on a play that was written for Goryaev takes the young actor for his role. Goryaev at first falls into despair, leaves the theater, turns to friends. After a while he digests what happened and realizes that it is time to leave the stage with dignity.

The famous scientist, academician and art critic Andrei Ilyin, who survived with the Hermitage staff the harsh trials of the Leningrad blockade, returned to his hometown after many years. The whole life of Ilyin is connected with Leningrad. A life that in the distant years of World War II would have seemed to have no future, but which, despite the unbearable horror of hunger and devastation, continued only in the name of the future ...

When a small state is threatened with capture by a much stronger one, only one thing can save it: the emergence of a competitor comparable to the invader. In a graceful and witty play by Scribe, hostilities unfold around a young officer, in whom the modest saleswoman of a jewelry store, the omnipotent Duchess of Marlborough and the Queen of England herself fell in love at the same time.

Events unfold on the estate of Pyotr Sorin, which brought together representatives of secular society - actress Irina Arkadina, the host's sister and her lover, the famous writer Trigorin. Sorin’s nephew, Konstantin Treplev, in love with a neighbor girl Nina Zarechnaya, who dreams of becoming an actress, writes for her a play that she plays in the scenery of Sorin’s garden.

A man decides to escape into the future by the way of hibernation. When he wakes up, feeling lucky that the experiment worked out well, the staff of the hibernation company politely walks him to the outside were he finds a post atomic war desert… He wakes up! Thank God it was just a dream! Or was it?

The main motive of the film - a tragic love of Lesya Ukrainka to Marxist revolutionary Sergei Merzhinskiy. The film is about the poetess' trip to her beloved, in the literal and metaphorical sense at the same time.

Poems by A. Blok, letters and memoirs of L.D. Mendeleeva-Blok, excerpts from V. Orlov's book "Paths and Destinies" are heard.

Four parallel stories: "Ship", "Port", "Pompeia" and "Theater" are connected with the fate of the captain of a training warship Andrei Glebov, who visited a foreign port city.

The basis of the play is the eponymous poem and the poems of Alexander Blok.

No synopsis available yet.

The year is 1940 and Nazi Germany is at the height of its military prowess, having captured most of Europe and eyeing the Soviet Union to the East. The Russian military command suspects hostile intent from Germany and so arranges for its spies to infiltrate ranks of the German military and the SS. Alexander Belov is a Russian spy, who travels from Soviet-held Latvia to Nazi Germany under an alias of Johann Weiss. His mastery of the German language, steel nerves and an ability to manipulate others help him to use his connections in the SS to ascend the ladder of the German intelligence. He uses his position to identify sympathetic Germans, who help him to procure vital intelligence, and to help local resistance movements in their collective fight against Nazism.

Political thriller based on a story of coup against Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in Moscow on 6–7 July 1918. They assassinate German ambassador in Moscow in hope of gaining public support and dragging the country into new war with Germany.

According to Fyodor Protasov, the surrounding life is riddled with dirt and falsehood. He does not want to participate "in all this dirty trick", he does not have the courage to fight it, and he chooses the third way — to stage suicide.

In a compartment of the Moscow-Novosibirsk train, a young physicist meets famous film actors. The conversation accidentally comes to Einstein, and the woman begins to explain to her fellow travelers what the theory of relativity is. The actors are incidentally on their way to the shooting of a film about physicists, but they do not understand the subject at all.

No synopsis available yet.

Little Sasha is growing up without a father, but he really wants to have one. He has already called three strangers "dad." One day, a friend of Fenechka's, Fyodor, came to visit her, and Sasha wouldn't leave his side for a moment...

A drama based on the daily life of a hospital and its doctors.

A female poet and author faces the harsh realities of a besieged Leningrad. Based on Olga Berggolts' memoir of the same name.

Formerly a squadron commander, the hero worked at the small airfield for many years. Komesk - as his colleagues call him in a friendly manner - is now retired. Every day with his little granddaughter Zaya, Komesk comes to the airfield - and it often happens that the decision of the entire team depends on his word.

Set during the last days of the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution. The Crimea Peninsula is the last stronghold of the White Guard, and the Red Army is planning the final assault. The first story line of the movie follows two Red Army soldiers: unlikely friends Nekrasov and Karyakin. The second story line is about a White Guard officer Brusentsov who is devoted to Russia and his cause but sees it being destroyed day by day.