The Italian Character: a film within music and about music. The Italian character is the story of one of the most renowned orchestras in the world, enriched by archive material of the last thirty years about the great conductors who have been performing on the most famous rostrum in Rome.

Something broke down in Andrey and Nadia's marriage. He goes to live in Moscow, she and the children stay in Irkutsk. On New Year's Eve, the family gets together again, but it seems to be the last time. The word "divorce" sounds quite definite. On January 1, it would seem that everything has already been decided, but a whole chain of events - funny, sad, sometimes even strange and inexplicable - seems to be keeping the family from taking the wrong step. They will all get lost and find each other on this magical night on the island of Olkhon and realize that past grievances are easy to forget, but there is something much more important in life.

In the music world the outstanding pianist Alexander Toradze (1952–2022) is also known as Lexo, as he was often called by his relatives, friends, and colleagues. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire in 1977. In the 1980’s, he emigrated to the USA, taught at Indiana University, and later launched his own piano studio. Toradze was a brilliant interpreter of the works of Shostakovich, Mussorgsky, Scryabin, and Stravinsky. The recordings of Prokofiev’s concertos performed by Alexander Toradze with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev are considered a gold standard. The pianist also appeared frequently with leading orchestras of Europe and the USA.