A newspaper sends a young reporter into the Russian countryside to make a nice, sensationalist yarn out of some strange stories going around. Once in the countryside, Igor is accommodated by a peasant family living in the middle of nowhere close to a ruined church. The family is convinced that their dead patriarch will return from the dead as a blood-drinking fiend exactly nine and a half days after his demise.
Tag: RUSSIA
In post-Soviet Russia, detective Andrey is sent to investigate the bizarre suicide of a young mother. As he delves into the case, he becomes entwined with the woman’s sister Marina and the dark legacy of her family’s past. What begins as a routine investigation evolves into an encounter with unseen forces that prey on grief and guilt. The atmosphere grows oppressive, and Andrey finds himself drawn into a realm where the boundary between the living and the dead is dangerously thin.
Vadik Chernyshov is an impoverished dreamer who spends his life drifting though Moscow with a video camera, hoping to shoot footage that will interest Western press agencies. He falls in love with the beautiful Helen, an English media executive, and subsequently they must contend with the barriers that their different backgrounds present.
One day Pavel, a young man wounded in the war, suddenly shows up at the home of a Moscow scientist name Krymov and claims to be his illegitimate son. Krymov denies this, but out of compassion he helps arrange a necessary operation for Pavel. Then certain things begin happening which suggest to Krymov that he may have a psychologically unstable fellow on his hands.
On the eve of World War I, Jews in European ghettos and market towns were transfixed by a new sensation: motion picture images from Palestine. Many had never seen a movie before and some cried as they escaped the cold Russian landscape for a moment, on a celluloid pilgrimage to the land of milk and honey.
Between 1986 and 1990, Arthur Aristakisian lived among the tramps and beggars of the city: drug addicts, emotionally disturbed, physically handicapped, and blind people. LADONI is the result of these four years. The film follows the beggars in their tough daily lives. Aristakisian has a biblical view of these outcasts, which is particularly expressed by the poetic voice over, intoning philosophic-spiritual reflections of a father who is talking to his unborn (aborted) child. According to Aristakisian, this refers to the direct cause for his film: the confusion that came over him when his girlfriend had an abortion.
St. Petersburg, early 20th century. The handsome and secretive Johann specializes in shooting erotic pictures depicting the floggings of bare-bottomed women. With the help of his assistants, the photographic creations gradually penetrate the peaceful households of two upper-class Russian families.