Aleksandr Rumnyov

Set during the early part of his reign, Ivan faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people. Sergei Eisenstein's final film, this is the first part of a three-part biopic of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, which was never completed due to the producer's dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's attempts to use forbidden experimental filming techniques and excessive cost overruns. The second part was completed but not released for a decade after Eisenstein's death and a change of heart in the USSR government toward his work; the third part was only in its earliest stage of filming when shooting was stopped altogether.

This is the second part of a projected three-part epic biopic of Russian Czar Ivan Grozny, undertaken by Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein at the behest of Josef Stalin. Production of the epic was stopped before the third part could be filmed, due to producer dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's introducing forbidden experimental filming techniques into the material, more evident in this part than the first part. As it was, this second part was banned from showings until after the deaths of both Eisenstein and Stalin, and a change of attitude by the subsequent heads of the Soviet government. In this part, as Ivan the Terrible attempts to consolidate his power by establishing a personal army, his political rivals, the Russian boyars, plot to assassinate him.

A prince discovers an enchanted beauty turned into a frog by Koschei the Immortal. After Koschei steals her again, the prince goes on a dangerous quest to free the land of the evil.

To save her family from disgrace and hunger, a young dowerless girl gets married to a rich old man, only to turn into an unscrupulous kept woman who forgets her close ones.

The outstanding researcher and scholar Irakly Andronikov speaks in the television film about his search for places connected with Lermontov in the Caucasus and about the identity of the woman to whom Lermontov dedicated many poems under the initials N.F.I.

In the fairy kingdom live stepmother, her evil daughters — Anna and Maryana, a limp husband-forester and his daughter from his first marriage — Cinderella. The stepmother exploits the poor girl as a housekeeper. With the help of her godmother-fairy, Cinderella gets to the royal ball, where a beautiful and very kind prince falls in love with her. At midnight, the magic ends, and poor Cinderella has to return to her former life. But on the crystal shoe that Cinderella lost while fleeing the palace to the battle of the palace chimes, the prince searches for the bride.

Zoya Vladimirovna Strelnikova, a famous operetta actress, quits the theater and gets a nanny in a military hospital. There she meets the wounded major Peter Nikolayevich Markov.

The film deals with a Russian battalion under siege by the Germans during the Second World War.