The film begins in the 1980s Soviet Union. Two best friends, Orlov and Muravyev, are serving at the Black Sea Navy Base in Sevastopol, Crimea. Both fall in love with one beautiful girl Nelly, and their friendship suffers a first blow. Because she picks Muravyev, his friend Orlov struggles with an inferiority complex and becomes a secretive alcoholic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, both friends are transferred to the Northern Fleet on the Polar Ocean. One day their sub is performing a routine training. A disturbed WWII mine slowly moves on a collision course with the sub. A mighty blast knocks down everyone inside the wrecked sub, 72 meters below the sea level. Then ensues a nerve-racking struggle for survival.

In the old house, but in the heart of the big city lives a Russian intellectual Chekhov's tailoring Ilyin. He lives a quiet-peaceful and for the time being do not know what in the old closet is the entrance to a mysterious cave and magic the room from which you can easily get to any capital in the world…

The czar of Russia has died and a power vacuum has developed. This period in the late 16th and early 17th century has been called "The Time of Troubles." There are many impostors who claim to the right to rule, but there's only one heir, the Czarina Kseniya Godunova. She has married a Polish military leader who wants to claim the Russian throne in her name so he can rule all of Russia. As the Poles move in on Moscow in an attempt to install the czarina on the throne, Andrei, a serf with a life-long infatuation of the czarina attempts to save her from her brutal Polish husband.

1927. A retired Red Army commander Constantine Vorontsov is appointed a Criminal Investigation Department head in a principal city of province. An experienced repeater named Korney shows up in the city. Thanks to a successfully performed operation a place of a local thieves gathering place is now known. But Korney, foreboding of an ambush, changes the place at the last moment. Vorontsov doesnt have enough time to warn all his colleagues and heads for the thieves meeting by his own.

Sergei and Andrei are walking through a city park and see that a film shoot set just post World War II is taking place . They climb over the park fence to get a better view but hit some cable lying on the ground and find themselves in the past - on May 8, 1949, a day which they seem doomed to relive over and over again.

Father Alexander is trying to maintain peaceful life for his church amidst the Nazi occupation during WWII.

A Russian soldier who spent ten years in captivity in Afghanistan, returns to his home village and shocks all its inhabitants because of his conversion to Islam. During his absence, his father hanged himself, his brother served a prison term and his former fiancée has become a woman of very low morals. The village is the scene of endless drinking while the local boss is selling off the land for dollars to new-rich Russians. Our hero turns out as the only sober and hard-working member of the community. However, his attachment to his new faith soon provokes the hatred and rejection of everyone else, including his own family.

"Makarov" both a popular Russian name, and also slang for the word "gun," serves as a metaphor for the brutal reality of life in a post-totalitarian society. The story's protagonist, Makarov, embodies this struggle as he becomes more mechanical and less spiritual upon acquiring a gun.

Most of the action of the film takes place in the studio of a talk show, where a political scientist, a patriot, a pop star and other characters, led by the host, discuss the figure and legacy of St. Sergius of Radonezh. In the midst of recording, the Presenter suddenly finds out that his program is being closed. Having decided that he has nothing to lose, the Presenter goes all in and seeks, first of all, to "expose" the church, the authorities, and his interlocutors... But the effect is not at all what he expected. In the heat of a lively and even furious polemic, we begin to see the true Sergius of Radonezh, and in episodes of history, as in a mirror, we guess the problems of modern Russia.…

Almanac of five short stories commissioned by ROSKOMKINO to celebrate the 100th anniversary of cinema.