The best Ivan Shibanov’s movies

Europe, 1709. Russia and Sweden are at war. Two French duelists are exiled by King Louis XIV of France: one to the side of Czar Peter the Great of Russia, the other to the side of King Charles XII of Sweden. Although separated by war and allegiance, fate has not finished with them.

Yesterday's Leningrad schoolgirl Masha Yablochkina, after a fierce blockade winter of 1941-1942, comes to the railway courses hoping to survive and gain strength. From there, the girl is sent to the construction of the Shlisselburg highway, which connects the city with the mainland and is in direct sight of German artillery. So the heroine gets into the 48th locomotive column of the special reserve NKPS, which, at the cost of the deadly risk, will have to deliver 75% of all cargo and military equipment to Leningrad.

The thirties, the heyday of Soviet film production. The story of the famed couple's glory — a filmmaker and actress, behind the external well-being of which were hidden strange contradictory relationships and a sense of fear that they carried through their whole lives. The prologue to this story is the 85th anniversary of Lidiya Polyakova, the formerly brightest star in Soviet cinema, who played the main role in all the films of her own husband, director Konstantin Dalmatov. Now in the courtyard there are other times, Dalmatov’s movies are called ideological agitation, and the director himself and his wife are hiding from the world in the country, trying not to let anyone in. Before the audience, there is a story of a dizzying triumph of this cinematic couple and its behind-the-scenes drama — a story that began in the 30s of the XX century.