Maxim and his comrades-in-arms are participating in top-secret experiments into the creation of a new man. The employees of the secret Institute are characterised by everything Maxim detests: alcoholism, depravity, weak will, loss of ideals, and lack of faith in the future. Vika, one of the waitresses in the Institute's cafeteria, falls in love with the young communist, though she is scared by his fascination with eugenics and his violent tendencies. Vika hopes that her passion and tenderness will soften Maxim, while the state security agents keep a watchful eye on their developing relationship.  

02 June 2020 

While the scientists conduct their research and experiments, the Institute's facilities team live their own lives ? it's a separate world, in a separate space, with its own relationships and rituals. Sasha, a young janitor, notices a certain softness and kindness in an older janitor, Valera, and they steal away together to drink to their ?male love?. In a small, secluded room, away from their colleagues, the two men waver between resisting and giving in to their feelings and desires, walking a tightrope between violent tendencies and a need for tenderness.  

12 May 2020 

It is 1953, Stalin has just died. It is a troubled and uncertain period for the whole of the Soviet Union, particularly for the state security services. In the Institute, a secret research facility, the scientists continue their theoretical and experimental work. Every night they strain their ears to listen for footsteps in the dark corridors: who have they come for this time? Who has reported on who? Having survived the fear and humiliation of an interrogation, the Head of the Theoretical Department, Andrei Losev, refuses to cooperate with the security services, only to face a new ordeal back in his own home.  

08 May 2020 

Once just a girl from the provinces, Nora is now married to a successful scientist and lives together with her family within the confines of a secret and privileged Moscow institute. Nora is visited by her mother for the first time since her wedding. Her mother closely observes the atmosphere within the couple's home, trying to work out whether her daughter is happy. During the course of their intimate conversations the complexity of their contradictory relationship is revealed.  

24 April 2020 

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.  

 

Two scientists grow old and weary together in a secret Soviet Institute, their unconventional friendship the only consistency in a lifetime of personal and professional disappointments.  

 

Within the top secret Institute of Physics Problems, the scientist Nikita Nekrasov is visited by his wife and small children. While away from his family the physicist has managed to fall in love with other women. In open conversations with his spouse ? in the bedroom, the dining room, and while out walking ? he attempts to convince her of the legitimacy of polygamous relationships, and to test the limits of her unconditional love.  

 

Alienated from the rest of the scientific Institute in which they live, a lonely housewife and her teenage son break the ultimate taboo, with only their submissive maid to bear witness.  

 

Nikita Nekrasov is a scientist, a theoretical physicist who studies our world and other possible worlds. He refuses to make a choice between mathematics and physics, between one woman and another, as he ponders the existence of the multi-universe. At scientific conferences, attended by eminent foreign scientists and a rising younger generation of physicists alike, Nekrasov gets carried away debating the beauty of string theory. He attempts to explain to all of his women ? Katya, the librarian, Zoya, the scientific secretary, Svetalana, the head of department ? about the theory of his own polygamy, and the possibility of having enough feelings to satisfy everyone.  

 

A mathematician in a secret Soviet research Institute believes that ayahuasca is the key to unlocking all the potential of the quantum universe, but its nightmarish visions also foreshadow his tragic demise.  

 

«The Empire» is a film in the genre of a novel, in four books. «The Return of the Prodigal Son», «War and Peace», «The Big Bang», lasting 8.5 hours. These are the dialogues of the two protagonists ? Krupitsa and Dau ? and scenes from the life of the Institute of Physical Problems (from the year 38 to 52). The Big Terror, Power and Man, Revolution and War, Christianity, Buddhism, Shamanism, the Atomic Bomb, Scientists and Physicists, etc. «State security warriors», wives, girlfriends, employees ? that is the theme of the novel, which tells the story of the destiny and resistance of a genius in the era of dystopian Empire.  

 

The film DAU is the culmination of more than twenty years of work. It brings together material shot more than fifteen years ago with scenes created in recent years, transforming them into a single, unified work. Shaped by time itself, the film could only have been made today. The starting point was my interest in the human being ? in our ability to love, to create and to be free, to make moral choices and to experience happiness in a world where a totalitarian system gradually changes human nature itself. I chose a Greek as the protagonist. The Greeks, as representatives of a pre-Christian civilization, had completely different foundations of morality and ethics from our own. Greek tragedy unites fate and freedom: destiny exists as a higher order, yet it is fulfilled through countless, almost imperceptible human actions. Contemporary physics was the project?s core conceptual reference, from which the language of the film emerged. By dividing the film into several parts, three different cinematographers, production designers and costume designers created three independent visual worlds. Along with them, the composition, light, colour, sound, rhythm, camera movement and the very nature of the actors? existence change as well. Documentary, dream, vision and historical memory became equal states of a single reality, paralleling quantum physics. A reality in which time and space are no longer linear or fixed. The same principle drove the casting process. The film was shot over four years with thousands of extras who were characters of time. Their physicality, speech, gaze, the way they moved and the way they remained silent shaped the dramaturgy of the frame no less than script. In the film DAU, the world is constructed with almost archaeological precision while simultaneously existing according to the free laws of art. I sought to create a cinematic experience in which after the film ends, the experience does not end, with light, sound, space, rhythm, the body and time acting upon both the conscious and the unconscious mind of the viewer, continuing to live within them after the film has ended.