Irina Rozanova Movies

A woman who dreams of fame and success will let nothing stand in the way of her goals in this pointed drama from Russian director Andrei Konchalovksy. For most of her life, Galya (Yuliya Vysotskaya) has wanted to make something of herself in the fashion industry, but in the town of Rostov, she hasn't gotten any further than running a sewing machine in a clothing plant. When Galya is persuaded to pose for a revealing photo used in a local newspaper ad, she decides it's her destiny to become a model and convinces her boyfriend Vitya (Ilya Isaev) to loan her enough money to move to Moscow. Galya tries to persuade the editor of a leading fashion magazine (Irina Rozanova) to give her a chance, but it soon becomes clear the editor is immune to Galya's flattery. Galya takes a job as a seamstress and ends up sewing new creations for Mark Schiffer (Yefim Shifrin), a well-known designer. Galya takes every available opportunity to put herself before Schiffer, and her persistence leads to another opportunity to show her talent as a model. Meanwhile, Vitya has found work as a bodyguard, and as he protects the safety of both politicians and organized crime kingpins, he develops his own relationships with the wealthy and powerful. Glyanets (aka Gloss) was the opening night attraction at the 2007 Sochi Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Directed by Dimi Meskhiyev, this hallucinatory film follows cynical businessman Max (Sergei Shakurov) as he investigates the murder of his childhood best friend. The trail leads him in several unexpected directions, including into the path of several beautiful (and sometimes deadly) women. Eventually, Max runs into a gangster who shows Max the diary of his murdered friend. The Diary of a Kamikaze also features Nikolai Chindyaykin, Natalia Kolyakanova, and Yevgenia Dobrovolskaya, and was viewed at the Cannes Film Festival. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Alia (Yvgenya Dobrovolskaya) is a single mother who has no home and no money. Caring for her infant is almost impossible, and she feels that she is doing the best thing for her child and for herself when she abandons it in a public toilet, where it is sure to be found and brought to an orphanage. Later, however, she is overcome with guilt, and a priest suggests she get a job in an orphanage in order to deal with. She succeeds in finding one, and is horrified to discover the abusive and threadbare circumstances the children endure there. Rather than assuaging her guilt, thanks to this job she now has a serious case of righteous anger to cope with as well. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this humorous sexual romp, the story begins as its hero (Gennadiy Khazanov), now an old man, is being pushed in his wheelchair at a Black Sea resort in post-Soviet Russia. His nurse is prim and very professional, the essence of asexual coolness. In a series of flashbacks, memories are screened of the man's happier days as a student in postwar Moscow, and then as a photographer at the same resort in the 1950s. He was an inveterate womanizer, and most of the time, the women were as willing as he was. His romantic career continued without major setbacks (though his encounter with a houseful of lesbians was a bit daunting), until he inadvertently begins an affair with the mistress of Stalin's chief spymaster and torturer, Laventy Beria. When he finds out about who her other boyfriend does, it is at a very inopportune time, and he suffers an attack of impotence which afflicts him frequently thereafter, for he cannot get the spymaster's face (and the fate he barely escaped) out of his mind. However, sometime in the course of these recollections, his memory heals itself, and he is potent once again, as is proved by the warm and protective way his once-cool nurse cares for him at the end of the film. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

By 1922, the bloom was off the rose of the Bolshevik Revolution, and people were adjusting to food and housing shortages and ever-increasing poverty. In a symbolically parallel development, a young man has optimistically married an extremely beautiful woman, filled with dreams of happily-ever-after. Instead, she almost immediately beds his best friend and then becomes a high-class prostitute while he looks on helplessly. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this gentle comedy, an unpopular resident in a Russian village has his life completely changed when he announces, entirely on a whim and just to upset things a bit, that he's moving to the Pacific coast. This news electrifies his small community, and he suddenly becomes the popular toast of the town, something he has never experienced before -- and likely never will again, because the movers are carting off his belongings, and he will be forced by the momentum of the events he has set into motion to board a bus headed east. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide