Katya, a young librarian, believes in love, but her ideals are crushed by reality. After a string of disappointing affairs, Katya finally finds tenderness and understanding in the arms of her colleague, a journalist called Tanya. But then the First Department interferes: the state security services see this relationship as unacceptable for a Soviet woman.
Alexey Trifonov
Chief of the General Department (1952–1960); Head of the Institute (1960–1966)
Ekaterina Yuspina
Librarian (1942-1947); Head of the library (1951-1953)
Tatiana Polozhy
Journalist; Literary editor of Izvestiya Instituta (The Institute News)
Alexander Efimov
Junior research scientist in the mathematical physics laboratory
Teodor Currentzis
Dau
Radmila Shegoleva
Nora
Katya, a young librarian, believes in love, but her ideals are crushed by reality. After a string of disappointing affairs, Katya finally finds tenderness and understanding in the arms of her colleague, a journalist called Tanya. But then the First Department interferes: the state security services see this relationship as unacceptable for a Soviet woman.
Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.
Living together in a workers' dorm, Katerina and her friends are determined to make it in Moscow. But when a boorish cameraman forces himself on her, Katerina finds herself pregnant and alone as her friends move on. Twenty years later, Katerina is a factory director, outpacing her old roommates career-wise, yet still alone but for her daughter. Love seems possible again when she meets a genial mechanic.
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
Vera is a troubled teenager fresh out of school feeling trapped in her provincial port town during the turbulent times of perestroika. Her days and nights are filled with drinking, sex, and family dysfunction.
In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.
Love comes without asking. Often not to those, not so and not then. Can a genuine feeling survive when everything started wrong and the whole world is against it? Give up everything or give up? Burn or survive?
A young Kyrgyz immigrant tries to eke out a living in Moscow after abandoning her newborn and fleeing the hospital.
New York photographer Ronit flies to London after learning about the death of her estranged father. Ronit is returning to the same Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her decades earlier for her childhood attraction to Esti, a female friend. Their fortuitous and happy reunion soon reignites their burning passion as the two women explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.