The second film by Sokurov featuring Boris Yeltsin as the principal character. Now he is the President of Russia, invested with power, bearing the full responsibility for the destinies of his distant compatriots as well as his closest kin and friends.
Carmen, a journalist with two children, is on her third marriage, to Antonio, a record producer. Over the course of a year, we follow her through her discontents: Antonio's lateness, his fatigue when she wants to make love, his insistence on her company when she prefers solitude, his treating her work as less important than his, his casual and cruel dismissal of her opinions, her boss assigning her an incompetent editor, bartenders ignoring her, her passage into middle age.
The boy who wasn't supposed to grow up—Peter Pan—does just that, becoming a soulless corporate lawyer whose workaholism could cost him his wife and kids.
This short fiction film tells the story of a very unusual satellite named Zenon. Zenon is a product of the most up-to-date technology and so displays an unusual characteristic for a computer: he is conscious.
Dough-crazed mercenaries Sammy and Klaus are on a mission to escort the seriously ill prime minister of a South American country that has just been taken over by the rebels to his buddies over the border.
Pierre is a womanizing photographer, with a slight mean streak. For whatever reason, Camille, an artist in her own right, finds him entrancing and easily succumbs to his devious efforts to get her into bed.
A disgraced sports presenter falls victim to an accidental head trauma and slips into a coma. He awakens months later to find that South Africa was not as he left it, he is now in the New South Africa, and his multimillion-Rand idea has been stolen from beneath him.
Claude, a militant anarchist, is caught stealing and is shot by a policeman while fleeing the scene. Dodo, a hairdresser, is hit by one of the stray bullets.