Pavel Kostomarov

Story of Lendoc (Leningrad Documentary Films Studio). Among the heroes of the film are not only famous film directors who shot films at the studio in different years, but also employees of other professions, like cinematographers, writers, editors, producers, sound designers…

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On July 30, 2018, documentary filmmaker Alexander Rastorguev was killed in the Central African Republic. He left a unique mark on Russian cinema, but managed to do much less than he could. "Rastorguev" - a portrait of one of the brightest and most free filmmakers of our time; direct speech and fragments of films, forming a single statement about the meaning of art, homeland and pain.

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The film is about Alexey Popogrebsky's film "How I spent this summer". In the film, there are no tedious reflections of the actors and the director about their film against the background of posters of the same film. But there is life itself, real, unmasked, and, despite the sea of comicality, it makes you horrified at how the Russian film process can take place…

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On July 30, 2018, documentary filmmaker Alexander Rastorguev was killed in the Central African Republic. He left a unique mark on Russian cinema, but managed to do much less than he could. "Rastorguev" - a portrait of one of the brightest and most free filmmakers of our time; direct speech and fragments of films, forming a single statement about the meaning of art, homeland and pain.

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Аlina Makarova is a mother of six of her own children and one adopted child. Her ex husband is from Ethiopia, and all her own children are mixed race. Only her adopted son is white, but he has serious health problems and is psychologically unstable. Alina's older children realise what complications the adoption might bring and are afraid that there won't be enough room, time and love for everyone. But she convinces them that it's the right thing.

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An intimate portrait of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov — once Deputy Prime Minister and “an heir of President Yeltsin”, later an uncompromising adversary of Putin — that was assassinated near the Kremlin in February 2015. Election campaigns and hotel beds, protest rallies and office routine, train compartments and courtrooms, night walks and police vans – you have never seen any politician so close. This is a story how a journalist assignment turns into a genuine friendship.

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Realizing that something needs to change in life, a simple girl Sasha Gvozdikova leaves Yekaterinburg for Moscow, abandoning a boring job and a married lover. She writes short stories and dreams of getting them published, but overestimates her writing talent. Together with Sasha, two of her best friends from Yekaterinburg, Katya and Alyona, live in Moscow. The plot of the story revolves around three heroines who are trying to find themselves in metropolitan life and in relationships.

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The documentary project The Term was conceived in May 2012. When the directing trio commenced mapping the Russian sociopolitical landscape, Vladimir Putin had just settled into the Kremlin for his third term. The original experimental format of “documentary bulletins,” which were published daily online, allowed for wide-ranging content; in the feature film version, however, the filmmakers focused solely on the members of various opposition groups. Nevertheless, the work’s neutral position remains and viewers have to interpret the objectively presented situations for themselves. The main characteristics of this strongly authentic movie include close contact with the protagonists, precise editing, and an effectively controlled release of information.

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A remote village in the Northwest of Russia. A mental asylum is located in an old wooden house. The place and its inhabitants seem to be untouched by civilization. In this pristine setting, no articulate human voice is heard, and pain is muted. The landscapes and buildings are not so much inhabited as lightly entwined and then passed through by their anonymous residents, like some creeping mist. Phantoms half stuck, half undone in a phantom world—lost persons from a lost society?

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Sascha lives in a village on the Kola Peninsular in northern Russia and dedicatedly manages what is left of an old collective farm. He gets on well with his farm workers who respect him and also tolerate his more or less clandestine love-affair with Anya, a secretary at the local government office. But then Sascha is suddenly faced with a dilemma: the district’s self-seeking administrators, none of whom could be termed squeamish, offer him a lucrative deal for the farm. In legal terms, Sascha doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on since his lease on the farm was only agreed with a handshake. The pressure mounts, and even more so when his employees convince him to stand firm. Against the backdrop of a landscape exposed to the elements, this unflinching man’s destiny takes its course.

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A genuine satiric comedy, based on real conversations - both amusing and sad - overheard by a journalist in one of the most expensive Moscow restaurants. Hilarious and revealing, this is a film about women who choose between affection and money, film producers that don't really know what they're filming, and weary businessmen who sometimes say screw it, down a shot and leave their mother-in-laws to pay the bill. But most of all, it's about true love that favors noisy kitchen floor over gilded fine-dining halls.

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How is it possible to feel someone elses pain? The hero of this film is an autistic boy. His life is divided between an apartment with peeling walls on the outskirts of a large city, and a mental hospital. Anton comes into the frame when he is on the point of becoming a patient at a residential neuropsychiatric institution, a place where people with the sort of diagnosis that he has do not live long. The author, the camera, the hero. The distance between them shrinks with every passing minute, and the author has to enter the shot and become a character in the story. However, it is not a story about how one person helped another, but about how one person recognized herself in another. About how there is Another who lives in each of us and must be destroyed every day inside of us in order to survive.

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A youth comedy about the tragedy of the first love. An experiment in the area of the film language. REC, accidentally pressed in the middle of a fight. Jealosies, breakups, reunions. A few bedroom scenes, shot with a home camera. Cries and whispers of the urban outskirts. The audience of the film are both Bergman fans and YouTube viewers.

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Every year, 25,000 people die on Russian roads. You could say a whole city is disappearing from our planet. And about a third of its "residents" were involved in an accident due to speeding. Many drivers do not consider acceleration even at 30 km / h a violation, but statistics show that they are wrong. Five different stories combined in movie almanacs will make every viewer, at least, think about the right choice of speed. Both on the road and in life.

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Our eternal theme is crime and punishment. In Boris Godunov, the problems of conscience and existential choice are linked to the history of the country. Pushkin says that these things are woven into a mysterious knot or pattern. The choice of each of us is also the choice of our own history. An incorrect individual choice or a karmic mistake can lead to a chain of fatal events. If a person finds himself in power, it can become a problem for the whole people.

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These are the stories of the three guys,three friends, living in a city in the south of Russia. In the course of a year they recorded their everyday lives with a small HDcam. This record is what comprises the movie and to what it is dedicated. Our heroes are eighteen years old and they live average lives: work, have parties and, fall in love. But finally they will have to make those most important of personal choices which will define their future.

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A polar station on a desolate island in the Arctic Ocean. Sergei, a seasoned meteorologist, and Pavel, a recent college graduate, are spending months in complete isolation on the once strategic research base. Pavel receives an important radio message and is still trying to find the right moment to tell Sergei, when fear, lies and suspicions start poisoning the atmosphere...

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The authors of the project tried to understand the transformations that the image of the ship underwent in the human mind: a pirate ship of threat was replaced by a romantic ship of love, and a heroic warship turned into a deadly ghost ship. The "lecture" by art historian Arkady Ippolitov is accompanied by fragments from one hundred and thirty films. The original footage of the film was shot by cameraman and documentary film director Pavel Kostomarov. The composer of the painting is Leonid Desyatnikov. The film opens a series of documentaries of the studio "Workshop Session".

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The film chronicles everyday struggle of a Russian woman for “ordinary” happiness of her family.

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A dying actor asks a doctor to help him commit suicide in return for a masterpiece.

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A drunk couple spend their summer-holiday at sea. Their life is not everything they hoped for, and abuse is part of their relationship. At sea they dream about love and understanding, and we observe their fellow countrymen spending their holidays on the same beach. Tragedy, comedy, love, hate, sex : it is all there.

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The dramatic story of two Chechens, father and son, living in a remote northern village. During the Chechen war, the Sultan's wife was killed, his house was destroyed. Now he and his son Apti are trying to build a new peaceful life. They are completely disconnected from their usual environment and are forced to work hard without any hope of getting used to a strange and extremely unattractive world for them.

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Winter. A bus stop in a small village. People are waiting for a bus. They talk. Listening to their conversations, the viewer can imagine the world they live in. United by the movement of the camera, the place and the people blend together.

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Today’s twenty-something Russians are the first generation in the country’s post-communist history to have grown up free. Their twenties are the age of freedom, of fast-changing events and intense emotions. Perhaps only at this age they can live a whole life in one day. A young girl and her two accident companions walk halfway around St.-Petersburg; they flirt and tease each other, and for ninety minutes they act out a real-time romantic drama. This stroll is full of laughter and tears against a backdrop of the hustle and bustle of the streets.

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This movie is a collection of portraits of residents of Russian countryside. Not a single word. Only long look into the camera. Landscape. Flow of time.

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Refugees from the Caucasian republics, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Russians, meet on the shore of the Black Sea: they work as shop keepers, life guards, karaoke singers, or just enjoy their holidays. It all happens at a place called Broadway, which is no-where to be found on a map, not even the most detailed ones. The temporary inhabitants of Broadway construct a whole world en miniature, consisting of small carts, tents or booths parked in close, haphazard rows. The scenery, which is put up for a few weeks during the summer, bubbles with life – and in no way corresponds with ordinary daily life in Russia.

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The film is based on a true story that happened in Alaska in summer, 1943. Soviet pilot crew is flying new American bomber from the USA to the USSR under lend-lease& The pilot lands at an air base in the town of Nome for refueling only to find out that his partner has disappeared in the middle of the flight. Navigator cockpit is open, and the navigator himself has vanished into the thin air. Soviet and American intelligence do not believe in supernatural power, especially since the solder's missing parachute pack has valuable intelligence data. Recon teams of the two rival countries set out to search it in the depth of Alaska forest, however, soon another mysterious player joins the game, an aleut deity called Bansu.

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