Aquarela

In Russian, "Svyato" means "happy". But it is also a nickname for Svyatoslav, the son of director Kossakovsky, who for two years covered mirrors from Svyato. For the first time in his life, Svyato is going to watch himself on a mirror.

"Belovy (the Belovs)" is a breathtaking portrait of a troubled peasant family. It's poetry in the form of a documentary that won many prizes. Beautifully shot in vintage black and white, the film tells the story of two times widow Anna Belova who lives together with her brother Mikhail. Blending the two personalities, Kosakovsky characterizes the true Russian soul: she is the rational worker, honest and strong - he is the drunken poet, the idealist, his philosophy fades into radical nonsense time after time.

Trilogy about love, experienced at different moments in life, by different people: an old couple, a young couple and two children at infant school.

What would be the shortest route between Entre Rios in Argentina and the Chinese metropolis Shanghai? Simply a straight line through the center of the earth, since the two places are antipodes: they are located diametrically opposite to each other on the earth's surface. During his visits to four such antipodal pairs, the award-winning documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky captured images that turn our view of the world upside down.

The director films the street where he lives in St. Petersburg, for a whole year, documenting the changes caused by the celebration of its 300th anniversary.

A documentary about everyday life in Russia.

Director Victor Kossakovsky dedicated his documentary debut to the Russian philosopher and religious thinker Alexey Fedorovich Losev (1893-1988), who died shortly after the completion of the film.

Seven-year-old Polina and her 13-year-old sister Nastia live and breathe ballet. Both of them are studying at the Boris Eifman Dance Academy in frigid Saint Petersburg. They’re currently awaiting their grades to find out if they’ve done well enough to be promoted to the next year, with Nastia lovingly guiding he little sister through the process. But in the meantime, Nastia also has to deal with the high demands that the academy places on its students. The gorgeously styled shots are sometimes calm, even clinical, and sometimes warm, lively and funny.

It was one of his mentors who once told Kossakovsky, "There are two types of intelligent people; some say what they know, while others think while they speak, in order to try and say something they did not know yet, something that suggests itself in them." Victor Kossakovsky took this profundity to heart and became a filmmaker of the second category. He dedicated his documentary debut to the speaker of these words, the Russian philosopher and religious thinker Alexey Fedorovich Losev (1893-1988), who died shortly after the completion of this film. Shot in black-and-white, the film consists of two crucial shots that symbolize silence and night at both ends of the life chain. In the beginning of the film, the rising sun slowly swathes a cemetery in daylight. At the end, the earth covers a coffin bit by bit and heralds the great darkness. In Losev's words, "Divine intentions that lie beyond our reason, that's why we die."

Football seen through the eyes of some of the best directors of the world.