DAU

Alienated from the rest of the scientific Institute in which they live, a lonely housewife and her teenage son break the ultimate taboo, with only their submissive maid to bear witness.

Maxim and his comrades-in-arms are participating in top-secret experiments into the creation of a new man. The employees of the secret Institute are characterised by everything Maxim detests: alcoholism, depravity, weak will, loss of ideals, and lack of faith in the future. Vika, one of the waitresses in the Institute's cafeteria, falls in love with the young communist, though she is scared by his fascination with eugenics and his violent tendencies. Vika hopes that her passion and tenderness will soften Maxim, while the state security agents keep a watchful eye on their developing relationship.

A mathematician in a secret Soviet research Institute believes that ayahuasca is the key to unlocking all the potential of the quantum universe, but its nightmarish visions also foreshadow his tragic demise.

A sergeant officer lives a life of a loner, reads literary classics and dreams about acting. On his journey by train, he madly falls in love with a prostitute, but her pimp - another passenger on a train - is not willing to let her go, which makes their destiny tragic.

Katya, a young librarian, believes in love, but her ideals are crushed by reality. After a string of disappointing affairs, Katya finally finds tenderness and understanding in the arms of her colleague, a journalist called Tanya. But then the First Department interferes: the state security services see this relationship as unacceptable for a Soviet woman.

Natasha runs the canteen at a secret 1950s Soviet research institute. This is the beating heart of the DAU universe, everyone drops in here: the institute's employees, scientists and visiting foreign guests. Natasha's world is a small one, split between the demands of the canteen during the day and alcohol fuelled nights with her younger colleague Olga, during which the two confide their hopes of romance and for a different future. At a party one evening Natasha becomes close to a visiting French scientist Luc Bige and the two sleep together. The following day her life takes a dramatic turn when she is summoned to an interrogation by the KGB's General Vladimir Azhippo who questions the nature of her relationship with the foreign guest.

The action takes place in Moscow, in the 70s. The characters have not seen each other for many years, but now they have met and are reminiscing about their youth, when they were students at the institute, jazz enthusiasts, and known as stylists.

A secret Soviet Institute conducts scientific and occult experiments on animals and human beings to create the perfect person. The KGB general and his aides turn a blind eye to erotic adventures of the director of the Institute, scandalous debauches of prominent scientists and their cruel and insane research. One day, a radical ultra right-wing group arrives in the laboratory under the guise of test subjects. They get a task - to eradicate the decaying elements of the Institute’s community, and if needs be, destroy the fragile world of secret Soviet science.

Based on Turgenev's novel

A story of a mature man who comes back home from the city to take care of his dying mother. The mother’s passing, together with a meeting with his brother and a woman he loves, makes him reflect on the life he’s had and choices he’s made along the way. And then, just before her death, the mother tells Anatolii about a treasure she has buried inside the shed…

An ongoing experiment, evolving from a biopic about Soviet physicist Lev Landau into a large scale project – part cinematic cycle, part behavioral experiment – involving hundreds of participants from around the world. Combining elements of film, theatre, science, psychology, architecture, visual arts and performance, it has created a complex and absorbing world that has to be lived as much as seen.

«The Return of the Prodigal Son» is the first volume from the film (novel) of Anatoli Vassiliev’s «Empire» inside the Dau cycle. The story is about inner kinship, which is much closer than blood, about inevitable betrayal, about almost fatherly love and forgiveness. Cigarettes (papirossa), images from «Faust» and «Don Juan», walks in the Soviet Park of culture... And a terrible, narrow gap inside the brutal regime where you have to be skilled enough to survive... Yes! and they also play gorodki (skittles) with childish passion!

It is 1956. Dau is a distinguished Soviet scientist who meets up with the love of his youth – Maria, a Greek actress – during her three day visit to Moscow. They haven’t seen each other for 25 years. Dau is a successful and prosperous scientist, but feels excruciatingly dissatisfied with his family life. Through Maria he hopes to regain lost harmony and beauty, but reality intrudes when Nora, Dau’s wife, returns home.

The ship repair plant's director is appointed to the post of the regional executive committee's chairman. He has his own point of view on the prospects for the Far Eastern region's development, and he will have to defend the ecological experiment to protect the unique nature of the region step by step...

Once just a girl from the provinces, Nora is now married to a successful scientist and lives together with her family within the confines of a secret and privileged Moscow institute. Nora is visited by her mother for the first time since her wedding. Her mother closely observes the atmosphere within the couple's home, trying to work out whether her daughter is happy. During the course of their intimate conversations the complexity of their contradictory relationship is revealed.

The Black Council gives a vivid picture of the different levels of society in seventeenth-century Ukraine. The main theme is the need for people to be motivated by high ideals as they engage in the struggle of truth with injustice.

Considered to be one of his most brilliant creations, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a perfect masterpiece for the two enfants terribles of classical music and opera staging, conductor Teodor Currentzis and stage director Peter Sellars. Joined by the exceptional voices of Russell Thomas, Paula Murrihy, Ying Fang, and Nicole Chevalier, this is a one-of-a-kind performance of the score in the city where its creator was born!

Captured live from Naples’ splendid San Carlo Theatre – the world’s oldest continuously running public opera venue – where it opened the company’s theatrical season, acclaimed director Dmitri Tcherniakov stages a new production of Dvořák’s beautiful, supremely romantic opera about a water sprite Rusalka who longs to find love.

Wagner’s mystic masterpiece Parsifal at the Staatsoper Berlin, staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov and conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Wagner’s last opera, Parsifal is a medieval epic story marked by Christian, Buddhist and esoteric references. It is about redemption and renewal, but this new production by Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov adds a jarring note : revenge. This “Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage” is similar to a Medieval epic, a blend of metaphysical dreams and esoteric battles with constant spiritual references. This new production is directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, conducted by Daniel Barenboim and sung by an international cast of excellent singers: Andreas Schager, Anja Kampe, Wolfgang Koch, René Pape, Tomas Tómasson and Matthias Hölle.

The second part of Richard Wagner’s monumental tetralogy in Dimitri Tcherniakov’s new production. He has thoroughly modernised the material and set the action in a research institute in the 1970s. Christian Thielemann is conducting *Der Ring des Nibelungen* at the Berlin State Opera, standing in for the house conductor Daniel Barenboim, who is unwell.

Opera lies at the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov's colourful idiom, but performances are few and far between; this realisation of his penultimate and grandest stage work is a very rare and special experience. Kitezh is known as "the Russian Parsifal", which encapsulates its mystical flavour and steady unfolding of a legend of redemption

“The most important work doesn’t take place on stage, but everywhere else,” Teodor Currentzis is convinced. And that is precisely where this film portrait follows him. For eight months, German director Andreas Ammer accompanied the charismatic conductor. He observed him in rehearsals with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, which Currentzis leads as chief conductor since 2018. He has visited him at his former place of activity in Perm, where he led the opera house from 2011 to 2019 and launched his career through meticulous work with his ensemble musicAeterna. He accompanied Currentzis on guest performances and had numerous conversations with him. The result is a many-faceted portrait of the impressive musician, who sees his profession also as a spiritual mission.

At Berlin’s Funkhaus, virtuoso pianist Alexandre Kantorow and star soprano Regula Mühlemann dazzle in this stunning program featuring Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 alongside Teodor Currentzis and his renowned Utopia Orchestra.

Premiered in 1787, “Don Giovanni” exposes the timeless theme of a man hovering between vitality and destruction. Neither morality nor the law can stop this serial lover in his quest to conquer all women as he places his own pleasure above all other principles. Today, the rich depth of Mozart’s masterpiece still astonishes audiences with its mix of comedy and seriousness, pleasure and love, entertainment and murder. At the helm of this new Salzburg Festival production, in a near-live broadcast from the Great Festival Hall, director Romeo Castellucci promises to focus on the ambiguity and inner turmoil of this serial lover whose immoral behaviour condemns him to a deadly solitude. The exceptional cast – featuring Italian baritone Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni), Russian soprano Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna) and Finnish bass Mika Kares (the Commendatore) – is accompanied by the chorus and musicians of the musicAeterna ensemble, conducted by Vitaly Polonsky and Teodor Currentzis.

Tsar Saltan marries the youngest of three sisters, having heard that it is her dearest wish to present him with a heroic son and heir. Her jealous sisters and the old Aunt Barbaricha cannot bear this situation to persist and by trickery see to it that the Tsaritsa and her newborn son Gvidon are thrown into the sea. In their barrel they are washed ashore on an enchanted island where the rapidly growing tsar’s son saves a swan from the clutches of a wizard. In gratitude, the swan helps Gvidon to visit his native country once again in the guise of a bumblebee. Three wishes, three miracles and three bee-stings later, father and son are finally able to get to know each other.

An exploration of 20th century Russia, following the fusing of the Party and the state after the Russian Civil War, which opened the doors to corruption, resulting in the exiling of the left and right opposition. Described using a combination of historical settings, biographies and masterpieces from Russian avant-garde artists, composers and writers from this period in history.

Celebrated Russian theatre director Anatoly Vasiliev's Asino (Italian for donkey) is an epic ode to this beast of burden. The donkey has a long cultural history dating back to Greek mythology and the Bible: Jesus rode into Jerusalem on one; Sancho Panza had a loyal donkey; Winnie the Pooh was friends with the dejected Eeyore. Donkeys stand for stupidity, stubbornness and humility.

The film "Who left the Light ..." is dedicated to the memory of theater director, theater and film actor Vladimir Ageev. He has been called "the main alchemist of modern filmmaking." A student of Anatoly Vasiliev, Vladimir Ageev paved his own path in art. His search and research led him to create his own creative style, to the "Theater of Mystery and Joy". The film uses archival recordings of the director's rehearsals, fragments from performances.