Arkady Smirnov

Woe From Wit

Walking the Streets of Moscow

On a stopover in Moscow, a young writer Volodya makes friends with Kolya, who is returning home from a hard night shift. Just as Kolya is about to take a rest, he is met by his old friend Sasha, who wants help getting a deferral from military service so that he can get married.

The Communist

A young ordinary communist, Vasiliy Gubanov, was among many who took part in the construction of the most important facility for the young republic, the power plant. He did his job in a way that was beyond human ability. He could love, too, with a passion and a passion for self, but his life was cut short very early.

The Macropoulos Method

Based on the eponymous play by K. Čapek, directed by the State Academic Maly Theatre of the USSR. The Macropoulos Method — an elixir of immortality, the possibility of which becomes a test of the characters' human integrity in the play.

The Mire

The action takes place during the Great Patriotic War. Peasant Matryona Bystrova loses her husband at the front, then her eldest son goes missing. Matryona decides to save the youngest son at all costs and shelters him from being drafted into the army in the attic of the house until the end of the war. But it turns out that saving her son, she condemns him to spiritual death, and herself to torment of conscience. A private story about the mother of a deserter grows to epic proportions...

Unripe Raspberries

Pensioner organizes a meeting of former classmates fifty years after graduating from school. Many are no longer alive, but those who came touchingly remember their distant childhood and youth, the joys and sorrows of bygone years.

Optimistic Tragedy

A female commissar is sent to the naval detachment, led by the anarchist Vozhak, on behalf of the Party Central Committee. She is tasked with subordinating the sailors to the cause of the revolution.

Fourth Height

Real story of the young legendary actress of Soviet cinema Gulya Korolyova, who started acting in films at the age of four. In May 1942, having barely finished school, Gulya voluntarily went to the front and soon died heroically in a battle near Stalingrad.

Before Sundown

A staging of the play of the same name at the State Academic Maly Theater of the USSR.

Guilty Without Guilt

A story based on a classic play by Alexander Ostrovsky.