Widely claimed to be Joseph Stalin's favorite movie, this classic musical comedy is a must-see. The action takes place on a steamboat on the iconic Volga River, as two groups of performers travel to Moscow to perform in the Moscow Musical Olympiad.
Merry Fellows was the first Soviet musical comedy. Set in Odessa and Moscow in the 1930s. Shepherd Kostya Potekhin (Utyosov) is mistaken for an international concert star. He falls in love with Anyuta (Orlova) and plays the "star" for her. In a cascade of comic musical numbers he becomes the leader...
Saint Petersburg, 1858. A group of composers known as The Five meet at Balakirev's. Young Modest Mussorgsky, both a civil servant and a musician, has become a fixture there. He tells about the first opera he plans to compose. Then he goes to the country where he discovers the lowly conditions of...
The end of the 1950s. The Chinese passenger plane, following the Beijing-Moscow flight, enters a thunderstorm and makes an emergency landing in the Baikal region. In addition to the Soviet citizen Varvara Komarova, all other passengers are foreigners. Using a stop, they explore new cities and get...
Soviet intelligence spouses — Lyudmila ("Lyre") and Fyodor ("Starling") Grekov at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War are tasked with settling in Germany. Personnel intelligence officers with vast experience are successfully introduced into German society and begin to work actively. At the...
An American circus performer finds herself the victim of racism after it is revealed that she's the mother of a mixed-race child. In the midst of the public scandal, she finds happiness, love, and refuge in the USSR.
A drab woman scientist, working on machine to harness solar energy, and a pert concert singer look-alike being courted to play her in a movie swap identities and find personal growth, professional success, love, and happiness.
Engineer-designer of the Moscow aviation plant Cochin took the secret blueprints home. He didn't know that foreign intelligence had long been hunting for these blueprints...
A loose Communist adaptation of a Dostoyevsky novel. The serf Egor Efimov, a talented violinist, dreams of true art. Released by his landlord, he goes to the capital. But cold, bureaucratic St. Petersburg quickly destroys his illusions.
Tanya Morozova, an illiterate but industrious textile factory worker, finds happiness through her education and the Stakhanovite movement. She becomes a shock labourer and ascends through the Party ranks, ultimately being elected as a member of the Supreme Soviet.
The film uses fragments of feature films and materials of the Gosfilmofond of the Russian Federation. In addition to the actors listed above, the following actors tell about the composer: directors Grigory Alexandrov and Ivan Pyriev, songwriters Mikhail Matusovsky and Vasily Lebedev-Kumach.
The young composer Mikhail Glinka performs his new work at a soiree at earl Vielgorsky's house. However, the public is accustomed to Western music, and reacts coldly to the creation of the composer. This makes him very sad, but soon he decides to go learn the art of music in Italy. After returning...
