Maksim Afanasev

In spring 1938 in the mountains in the north of Chile a fiery UFO, later named "Chilean Sphere ", fell down. The investigation of this episode, made by a film crew, has led to a sensational discovery. It appeared that before the Second World War (in the thirties) in the USSR a secret space program had been developed. The Soviet scientists and military authorities managed to launch the first spacecraft 23 years prior to Jury Gagarin's flight! "The First on the Moon" tells about everyday life, heroic deeds and tragedy of the first group of the Soviet cosmonauts. It is the first Russian film shot in a very rare genre 'mockumentary' or 'documentary fiction'.

In the hunting lodge on the outskirts of one-of-a-kind natural reserve lives game warden, Vasily Klintsov (Igor Lifanov), a young former captain from the special task force. A rich German businessman, in the company of the governor, comes to the nearby small town for hunting. Wild boar hunting is a risky and dangerous business. In addition, as ill luck would have it, a very dangerous criminal escapes from the closely located nearby maximum security penal colony. The hunt should be canceled. But the stakes for the bureaucrats are too high - the 'money bag' is prepared to invest in several large projects. Relying on the traditional Russian blind trust in sheer luck, the governor gives his OK for the hunt.

Based on the novel by Booker Prize Winner Ludmila Ulitskaya, The Funeral Party is set in August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?