The Magician

Provincial town near Moscow. Here in a large communal apartment several families live. Each has its own concerns, its interests, its troubles and joys. A communal apartment is not just a habitat. This is a kind of section of society. They are all very different, members of this "communal dormitory": the intelligent Vera and the philistine Larisa, old-age pensioners who live their lives, and the invalid Lyra, who dreams of a happy life in faraway Australia, the soulless clerk Bozhok and the young scientist Victor, forced to look for tutoring . However, their fates are inextricably linked with events and difficult collisions taking place in the country, with a sense of instability, fear, anxious expectation: something must happen.

Todorovsky's film examines life in a provincial Russian town (that is too small to even appear on the map) just outside of Stalingrad during the famous WWII Battle. This is NOT a traditional war film, and the epic events of the battle take place almost entirely off screen. Instead, Todorovsky outlines a crude love triangle between three young people caught up in the harsh Russian winter. The stark winter settings, and the characters' struggle for survival, are what make this film one worth watching.

The action takes place in Leningrad n the time of "perestroika" during the 1980's. Tatyana is a beautiful Russian nurse who is underpaid at her hospital job, so she becomes a prostitute catering to international tourists. She becomes well paid in dollars, and helps her ailing mother survive. Tatyana's international clients tell her about the life in other countries, so she accepts a marriage in order to escape from the grim Soviet reality. Even though she is married to a decent man abroad, she still suffers being labeled an ex-Soviet prostitute, and her new life is full of new troubles.

A young student Masha and doctor Zhenya found each other in the city. But their way to love was not so easy...

Based on the play of the same name by Aleksandr Nikolayevich Ostrovsky. The rich merchant widow Yuliya Tugina is practically ruined by her lover, impoverished nobleman Vadim Dulchin, who loves only himself and gambling. Merchant Flor Fedulych in love with a young widow Yuliya Pavlovna. But all her thoughts are occupied by the handsome Dulchin. But the wise and prudent merchant builds his intrigue, and soon they will have to combine marriage with the unloved, but the rich.

In a dormitory in 1951 four students prefer pranks to studying.

Story of 38-years-old Rita whose fiance didn't show up at their wedding.

About one day of a large mining family. In the center of the picture is a veteran, a former miner, and now a pensioner Panteleimon Dmitriyevich Grinin, who on Victory Day decided to introduce children to his “lady of the heart” hairdresser Zinaida. The action lasts only a day, but a lot happens during this time with the sons, daughters-in-law, daughter and Zinaida...

Vasily Muravin, 50, a teacher at the Moscow Institute of Management, is experiencing a crisis. At work, the place of the head of the department is replaced by the more pragmatic, but limited person Valentin Romanovsky. At home, his wife Lida, who earns at work more than her husband, habitually reproaches him for indecision. It’s hard for Muravin to come to terms with his established attitude to himself, but he is most worried when his wife shows disrespect for his main hobby - playing the guitar. Once, unable to bear the bullying, Muravin suddenly leaves the family (wife and daughter) and from work.