Affairs of the Past
A finding of an old briefcase in a ruined house in 1970s leads to a treasure, hidden in the 1920s.
Also Directed by Vladimir Shredel
A story about three circus actors and their adventures. Based on classic novel by Aleksandr Kuprin.
Nadya Shumin is engaged to be married to Andrey Andreitch, the son of a local priest. Nadya lives on her grandmother's estate with her mother, "a fair-haired woman tightly laced in, with a pince-nez, and diamonds on every finger." While Nadya is a woman with a great desire for education and independence, Andrey is a friendly but rather vacuous and totally unmotivated man. Sasha, an ill and impoverished young man who is spending the summer on the estate has long been considered part of the family. Sasha implores Nadya to follow her heart - to go to Petersburg and attend the University.
The Soviet command has alarming information about the new invention of the enemy. According to intelligence, the Nazis delivered a batch of new chemical shells filled with gas of tremendous destructive power to one of the sections of the Eastern Front. The Nazis want to test them in combat conditions, and then apply them on a large scale.
The film takes place in Leningrad and Sverdlovsk, in 1970 and 1979. Arriving on a business trip from Sverdlovsk in the Lenfilm, engineer catapults Sergei Gushchin meets a young actress Natasha. She invites him to show Leningrad, but Gushchin and he knows the city - he served here during the war. They are looking for an excuse for further meetings, but he always finds a reason to not to meet with the woman who is many years younger than him and with whom he has fallen in love with. Natasha understands too that she loves this man, but Gushchin leaves, and not daring to associate with her fate. In the end he leaves and only returns to Leningrad nine years later and then he tries to find Natasha again.
