Love Journal

18 directors, 18 novels, 18 short stories about Moscow...

Vika is twenty years old. She has black fingernail polish, wears pink dresses, and is constantly depressed. While working at a pizza place, she gets an order for a pizza delivery from Venya, a strange twenty year old boy who lives all alone in a deserted apartment in the middle of Moscow. Venya suffers from agarophobia, the fear of open space. When Vika arrives Venya lets her in and locks the door behind her.

Aspiring actress Sonya, having lost all hopes of getting an audition for the eminent artistic director of the theater, gets a job on the set of a film in which he is taking part. The girl, who is in love with her, helps the girl get closer to the artist, Vanya, an assistant sound engineer and part-time talented playwright who wrote a play especially for Sonya. However, due to excitement, all attempts by the inexperienced actress to express herself turn into awkward incidents. Time is running out, and soon Sonya will be faced with a choice: stay true to her friendship or carve out a place for herself in the sun.

The fanciful tale of an introverted little girl who grows up believing she has the power to make wishes come true. She must reconcile this belief with reality when, as a young woman, she journeys to Moscow and grapples with love, modernity and materialism.

In 1948, decades after fleeing Armenia to the US as a child, Charlie returns in the hopes of finding a connection to his roots, but what he finds instead is a country crushed under Soviet rule. After being unjustly imprisoned, Charlie falls into despair, until he discovers that he can see into a nearby apartment from his cell window - the home of a prison guard.

The story of a young girl who believes in miracles. The guys do not pay any attention to her, at work, her ideas are stolen and used, friends consider her a little strange, but the young girl does not lose heart and continues to believe in a prince on a white horse. And one day he appears. Handsome, young, he is subject to magic, and henceforth her feelings. How now not to believe in a fairy tale when she herself was in it?... The long-awaited prince will make her life truly magical.

"What would happen if I gave flowers to someone else?" This is the question Pasha, a courier from Sochi, asks himself on the eve of his wedding. Five years ago, he almost met the aspiring actress Yana, and now she is a superstar. The thought that they could have been together haunts Pasha, so for his bachelor party he decides to find out what would happen if he did give Yana flowers.

Left without a job in Moscow, the ambitious photographer Roma is forced to return to his native Ufa. There he meets the cheerful and naive janitor Yura, who finds himself in debt because of scammers. To help the poor fellow collect at least some money, Roma photographs Yura in the form of a star and, using Photoshop, places it on the cover of a fashion magazine. This picture goes "viral" on the Internet and turns an unknown janitor into a celebrity. This changes the life of both the "star" and its creator.

In a provincial town are waiting for a famous troupe of actors. However, arrived celebrities behave strangely and in preparation for the play with the director arouse suspicion in the "authenticity" arrived ... In the camp of the "actors" his troubles - the only "Prima", whose performance the governor came, himself, runs away with a young hussar to the Gypsies. The evening show, tickets are sold out, and no one to play. On tour to seek "the actress' replacement.

The story of the Podolsk cadets’ heroic stand outside Moscow in October 1941. Cadets were sent to the Ilyinsky line, fighting alongside units from the Soviet 43rd Army to hold back the German advance until reinforcements arrived. Hopelessly outnumbered, young men laid down their lives in a battle lasting almost two weeks to obstruct the far superior German forces advancing towards Moscow. Around 3,500 cadets and their commanding officers were sent to hold up the last line of defense outside Moscow. Most of them remained there for eternity.

Moscow schoolboy Volodya accidentally fishes out of the Moscow River a mysterious lamp, from which the genie Khottabych appears. He promises to fulfill any of his wishes, but each of them turns into unexpected consequences. Magic multiplies, rather than solves Volodya's problems. Nevertheless, the schoolboy is imbued with the genie's problems and, as a result, finds himself in the past, where Khottabych's daughter marries an unloved man. Trying to destroy this marriage and free Khottabych, Volodya and his friends go to an ancient Eastern wedding.

A story about bravery, self-sacrifice and human dignity put on trial by the merciless power of nature. A young pilot is fired from military air force after disobeying an absurd order. He gets a job as a co-pilot with a civil airline. Being brutally honest and direct, he is not on best terms with his new colleagues. During a flight to Asia his crew receives a distress message from a volcanic island and makes a decision to attempt a rescue mission. Will it be a success? Will they survive the disaster? They have a single chance to find that out: by being a team and sticking up for one another.

Based on the true story of the notorious Marquis de Sade. In 18th century Paris, an innocent beauty's search for her missing sister leads her into the deadly sensuous realm of the infamous Marquis de Sade. Imprisoned for his sordid crimes, the Marquis likewise has the beauty morally trapped... for she must help him complete his banned book of lust, or never learn the fate of her sister. It becomes a test of wills and wit, as the Marquis attempts to convert her to his deviously sexual philosophy. When the Marquis escapes his prison, she must follow him to his remote chateau of sin to finally discover her sister's fate, and to face her own.

This is a story of a small town girl named Nastya. Her newly married husband Ivan drives her to his hometown to meet his family. Upon their arrival Nastya feels she made a wrong decision: she is surrounded by weird people and she sees creepy photos all around the house. Ivan disappears while his family prepares Nastya for a mysterious traditional Russian wedding ceremony. She struggles to calm herself down hoping all this will end and they will live happily ever after. Only if she stays alive...

At the end of the 70s, a boy Mishka, abandoned by his mother and stepfather, lives in a provincial Soviet town. Curious, bold and angry. With his bluntness and fearless naivete, he conquers the local gangster John, and with the help of his patron begins to act in local taverns, finally leaving a dysfunctional family.

1993 - the story of one family suddenly turns out to be the history of the whole country. The relationship of painfully and inextricably linked husband and wife, emergency workers, and the growing up of their daughter against the backdrop of global change.

A black BMW, a symbol of luxury, is racing along the night streets of Moscow in the 90s. Bad luck turns four friends into criminals and they have no way back. Only the black “bimmer” is reliable in this life without rules, taking the friends farther and farther from Moscow, into the crazy and ruthless wilderness of Russian roads… None of them wanted to kill. None of them wanted to die. But they will have to face their destiny in the end.

The Fool is a movie about a simple plumber. An honest man, he is up against an entire system of corrupted bureaucrats. At stake are the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dorm that is at risk of collapsing within the span of the night.

They have been abandoned in a world adorned with concepts such as family, friendship, love, and opportunities. In search of answers to their questions, they devour themselves like a chemical substance that corrodes the world around, in order to eventually learn not to listen but to hear, not to look but to see. And to find their way.

On a cold winter’s day Sergey Sobolev, a major at the local police office, is driving to the hospital where his wife is about to give birth to their child. High from happiness, he’s driving too fast and runs down a boy on a passage walk, who dies. Now the major has only two options: go to prison or conceal the crime. Sobolev decides to compromise with his conscience and calls on a colleague to help him out. But the case turns out to be messy and when Sobolev finally changes his mind and tries to make up for his deed, it’s already too late…

Colleagues at work - Anna Sergeevna and young Lena - come to rest in a country sanatorium and become unwitting witnesses to the crime. They begin their dangerous investigation and feel that they, too, are in trouble. Trouble is everywhere here, everything around is saturated with it. Danger weakens and excites. Everyone is infected with danger, including the main suspect - Georgiy.

On TV a new reality show, "Pionerlager", has started. Following the results of a casting, five young men and five girls, led by young TV presenter Alice Ten, go to the thrown pioneer camp. The rules state that every week someone would be eliminated from the show. The last one remaining will win the main prize: one million roubles. But suddenly game rules change: the invisible observer declares that it is life, not money, that will be the award for the winner. The maniac hiding behind the mask of a horse, begins a hunt for the participants. Children's horror stories which he once listened to in pioneer camp, revive and become a plot of its own murders.

This is a story from the life of ordinary people. Marina is a fully accomplished woman. She is the director of a furniture store, beautiful, intelligent, and successful by the standards of her small town. Marina knows exactly what she wants and what kind of life suits her. She is so confident in her “right vision of the world” that she no longer takes into account the opinions of her daughter or her mother. Marina also has a personal life. Boris – both her boss and “beloved man in one” – is certainly a stroke of luck. True, he is married, and that hurts her pride, but at the same time, it’s convenient...

This movie is about the life of Marat Ayumov, a former soldier from Kazakhstan who fought in Afghaninstan. The past and present are interwoven in the memories of the protagonist. Throughout the film, in fragmented flashbacks, the hero recollects the time when he, as a soldier, fought in the armed conflict in the mountainous country as he travels to Afghanistan to accompany a young and creative TV crew making a documentary called “Following Alexander the Great”.

The pitfalls of youth sooner or later, but always come out sideways. In a terminally ill woman who finds a successful entrepreneur before her death, he with great difficulty recognizes his old love, whom he left pregnant twenty-four years ago, believing the slanderous denunciations of ill-wishers. The dying woman asks him only for one thing: to take care of her daughter, who is, after all, their child together. But the girl hates her father with all her soul, considering him to be the cause of her mother’s suffering.