Radio Liberty

A girl from St. Petersburg walks around protest-ridden Moscow, talking to riot police and believing that sooner or later they will go over to the side of the demonstrators. An 18-year-old student of a St. Petersburg college introduces herself as Alice and tells about herself that from the age of four she lived in an orphanage and in foster families. In Moscow, Alisa, for whom this is the first rally in her life, walks along the police cordons and looks under the OMON helmet. "Under the mask you can't see, are you even human?"

The Donetsk Airport, Ukraine. Rebuilt in 2012, but now a scene of utter devastation - shortly after Russian-backed separatists have taken it over. Weaving together the voices of fighters on both sides supported by battle video, we tell an unvarnished story of war through the eyes of those who were there. The desperate fight for an airport whose capture seems more symbolic than strategic, they also show how human nature can adapt - in sometimes disturbing ways - when one's life is on the line.

How Lyusia Stein - a graduate of VGIK and a municipal deputy of Moscow - went to work for Ksenia Sobchak's campaign headquarters.

The Great Cross procession is considered the largest and most difficult pilgrimage route in Russia. Many participants in the course believe that if you go this way with pure thoughts and a specific request to God, then it will be fulfilled. The main character of the film Leonid also has a request - an intimate dream. And there is a feeling that for him this religious procession is the last.

The tape is dedicated to writer, publicist, long-term employee and editor-in-chief of the Russian service of Radio Liberty Peter Vail. Filming took place in New York, Prague and Venice. The film uses rare archive photo, video and audio materials. Vail's texts are read by Alexander Filippenko. Peter Weil died in December 2009. In 2014 he would have turned 65.

Zakhar is 7 years old, and his brother Procopius is 9. Each of the brothers already has its own deer and its own tundra for wandering. Previously, children born into a nomad family at this age were almost forcibly taken away to study in a boarding school on the mainland. And they rarely returned to the parental home. Trying to preserve the traditions of the nomadic peoples in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the authorities decided to revive the practice of "nomadic schools" that disappeared in Russia in the 30s. That’s how the 23-year-old Nelli Andreevna falls into the Zharkov family in order to explain to Zakhar and Prokopy what a mathematician is needed in life and who Vladimir Putin is.

After three teenagers died of an overdose, artist and activist Katrin Nenasheva organized a self-help group called "Teens and Cats". In it, teenagers share their difficulties and support each other. Initially, at the meetings of the group, they talked about how to cope with drug addiction, later to this was added a discussion of mental illnesses, bullying, violence, selfharma.

About young workers and why they joined the protests - the film by Sasha Kulak, Yulia Vishnevetskaya and Andrei Kiselev "Strike. Minsk Tractor Plant".

The tale of how in St. Petersburg watched the match "Russia-Croatia".

Anatoly Ganne is sixty two years old. For thirty three years he’d been in prison. During his life Ganne followed thieves' concepts: not to have any family and home - so that there was nothing to take away. Now he is settled in Moscow, got married and has a son. But Moscow authorities are trying to take away his house.

Tyva, the poorest region of Russia, ranks first in the country in terms of the number of confirmed losses in the war in Ukraine per capita. Nadezhda Baykara, a resident of the small Tuvan village of Sush, is proud that the men from her family have always served. My uncle died on the territory of Ukraine in the Great Patriotic War, my son participated in the seizure of Crimea, was in Syria. In the spring, Nadezhda's beloved grandson, Aldyn-Herel, died in the war in Ukraine. Baykara is sure that her other grandson will also become a soldier. Meanwhile, local shamans perform rituals to protect soldiers sent to Ukraine from death. Only a few young Tuvans, despite the risks, dare to speak out against the war.

On April 23, after 11 days of mass protests, Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned. About how the opposition led by Nikol Pashinyan won - the film “Last Day”.

The "self-isolation" regime due to the coronavirus epidemic was announced in Perm on April 2, 2020. Patrol cars drove around the districts and an appeal was read through loudspeakers: "Citizens, we ask you to stay at home." It was forbidden to leave the house further than 100 meters, and move around the city without a pass. It was allowed to walk the dogs, go to the nearest grocery store and to the pharmacy, if required to keep a distance and wear masks. People over 60 were encouraged to stay at home. Streets and courtyards were patrolled. During the first week of quarantine, the streets were empty. The main points of congestion of residents were grocery stores and pharmacies. By the end of April, people began to go out for walks more often and treat themselves to irgi berries.

A 12-year-old girl, Tasia, from the village of Tomsino in the Pskov Region wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin asking her to help her mother, a nurse in a local hospital. The villagers didn’t like this, where Tasya and her mother had moved shortly before that - they say, you need to "work, not ask." Tasha began to be poisoned, and an ex-girlfriend met her online under the guise of a young man and lured naked photographs.

Rinat Sadykov lived all his life in the village of Oimur in Buryatia on the shores of Lake Baikal. He says that his wife wanted to move to the city, but he insisted on living in the village. Their children went to school in Oimura. After the divorce, the ex-wife moved to the city. Lately, Sadykov worked as a lumberjack, and went to work in Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude, because there was no work in the village. For the same reason, Sadykov advised his youngest son Vyacheslav, when he joined the army on conscription, to sign a contract and remain in military service. The last time the son came to the village to his father from the military unit for the new year 2022 to meet him together, and after that he went to the exercises in Belarus. After the start of the war on February 24, people from the military registration and enlistment office came to Sadykov's house and reported that Vyacheslav had died.

On May 9, at the Immortal Regiment procession in the mountain village of Mizur in North Ossetia, local residents came out with portraits of their warring relatives. One of the posters featured a photograph of an officer who died in March in Ukraine. 33-year-old captain Aslan Dzantiev was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage. On May 9, his family arranged a memorial ceremony, neighbors and relatives, according to the traditional Ossetian custom, prepared food and lit a candle on the grave of the deceased. In Caucasian families, men and women do not sit down together at the table and grieve differently, men make toasts and behave with restraint, and women cook food and do not hide their grief. Aslan Dzantiev grew up without a father and remained childless, his mother, grandmother and young widow mourn him at home.

A police sergeant of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” comes to Moscow to receive the Donbass Volunteer badge as a reward for participating in the hostilities in eastern Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian separatists.

The "Akrestino" detention center in Minsk received the gloomy fame of a place where people were especially severely beaten and tortured. However, this did not stop the demonstrations, and the authorities - at least temporarily, stopped their attempts to forcefully suppress the protests - and people freely took to the streets of Belarusian cities, and demonstrations in Minsk became unprecedented in number in the post-Soviet years.

On the 11th of November 2018 the elections were held in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic. One of those who came to vote is a former locksmith Alexander Zaslavsky, a participant under the call sign "Old" in the battles in 2014 and 2015.