FESTIVAL PROGRAM FOR 16 APRIL

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Salim a Palestinian father after losing everything in an Israeli airstrike, his home, wife and newborn child, attempts to help ease his unbearable pain by telling his own personal story of growing up in Gaza under occupation by an apartheid regime

Sergey Potapov (Serge) is a director, screenwriter, Honored Artist of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). He is one of the founders of the "Yakut new wave". Serge is a man of legend. Some consider him a genius of the Arctic ethnomodern, while others think he deserves the scandalous fame of "Yakut Tarantino". Potapov will become a guide for St. Petersburg public through the "inner country of Sakha" inhabited by the spirits of the Olonkho epic. At the end of June, the Sakha Republic celebrates the national holiday Yhyakh, the Yakut New Year celebration. The ancient ritual of meeting solar deities descending to Earth on fiery horses coincides with the birthday of the hero of our documentary. And this is just one key that helps to unravel the mysteries of creativity of the Yakut master who seems to manipulate the streams of reality.

A mother uses trees to commemorate the lost during the war. As
time passes, her child follows the same path as her.

Father Alexander, a retired priest (70 y.o.), lives the ordinary life of a elderly feeling out of place. One day, in a pre-trial detention center, he meets embittered Violetta (20 y.o.), who’s deaf and dumb from birth. He recognizes the girl as a child whom he baptized 20 years ago. Father Alexander arranges an extended family visit to spend a few days with Violetta and help her.

His father perished in a car accident a year ago, and his mother was left in a coma. On the first anniversary of his father's death, a son pushes his wheelchair-bound mother to his father's tombstone, where he runs into Dr. Li Min, a seasoned specialist who treated his parents and eventually sent his father away. Dr. Li Min unties the knot in his heart and reveals to his son the true cause of his father's death.