2V Studio

Our Space

Exactly fifty years ago the world has changed. Mad ideas of dreamers and fantasts have come true: the person has come off the Earth and flied away to stars. The Soviet breakthrough into space is one of the main victories of our country. Military triumphs, cultural breakthroughs – hardly these great events have brought the same feeling of joy and unity as Yury Gagarin's flight on April, 12th, 1961. Words ‘Sputnik’, ‘Vostok’, ‘Soyuz’, ‘Mir’ sound equally in all languages, and Gagarin's and Korolyov’s names have been written in mankind history for ever.

In each episode we will talk on events in which intertwined lives of many people, dozens of destinies have forever changed, as well as how ability, endurance, courage of our designers, cosmonauts, engineers have helped to make the impossible possible. Protagonists of the film - Sergey Korolyov, Yury Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova, Alexey Leonov, Vladimir Komarov and many others - appear in a chain of strained and highly dramatic stories as persons of outstanding will and strength of mind. They overcome lots of political and personal obstacles, trying not to barter away the human principles. Some of them became a legend during lifetime, about the others viewers learn for the first time.

Documentary cyclus ‘Our space’, the anchorman of which will be actor Vladimir Vdovichenkov, is a chronicle of the most significant stages of space exploration: from the start of the first artificial satellite of the Earth to ten years' continuous stay of different crews on the orbital station ‘Mir’. The epochal moments and little-known pages of history of space researches: the viewers will see unique shots of the documentary chronicle, art reconstruction, as well as interviews with participants and witnesses of the events.

Genre: documentary drama

Number of episodes: 8

Year of Production: 2010

Duel Razvedok (A Duel of Intelligence Services)

 “Duel Razvedok” is a cycle of documentary films about the historical relations between the intelligence services of different countries. This information has been kept in the strictest secrecy. Many unique shots and chronicles have never been shown on television before.

 Russia-Britain

This series describes the work of the British and Russian intelligence and counter-intelligence services as a bilateral process that continued throughout the 20th century with blows and counterblows, a sort of “duel” between the two sides. The participants in the film include intelligence service veterans and historians and former heads of British intelligence who have never before been interviewed on Russian television. Declassified materials and documents from both Russian and western archives were used for the first time in the filming. 

Film 1

Russia — USA

At the beginning of the First World War, the USA had neither an intelligence nor a counter-intelligence service in the full sense. The 1917 Russian Revolution upset the geo-political applecart. The first American resident agent in the USSR was the son of a Russian noblewoman and a Greek merchant Ksenophon Kalamatiano, while Ludwig Martens, the first Ambassador of the USSR to the USA, went down in the history of the intelligence services as the “overseas debut” of the young Soviet intelligence. That is how the confrontation began between the intelligence services of the 20th century’s leading powers.

 Film 2

The next stage in the stand-off between the USA and the USSR consisted in the struggle by Soviet intelligence for the Second Front and the atom bomb. While fierce battles were being waged just outside Moscow, the head of foreign intelligence Pavel Fitin and the chief-of-station in America, Colonel Vasiliy Zarubin, were summoned by Stalin to the Kremlin. Ways and channels needed to be sought urgently for bringing America and the USSR closer together and an eye kept out to ensure that the USA and Britain did not conclude a separate peace with Germany or join up against the Soviet Union.

 Film 3

The Soviet-American intelligence “duel” during the Cold War is a detective genre classic. By the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union had over 250 sources in the USA. The USSR managed to penetrate virtually all US government departments. The final episode of the documentary series covers a kaleidoscope of secret operations by the two intelligence services, head-spinning successes and scandalous fiascos, archive materials and memoirs of CIA and KGB veterans.

Russia – Japan

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Tsarist intelligence service underestimated the possibilities of the Land of the Rising Sun. The Far East of Russia and Manchuria were literally flooded by thousand of Japanese agents seeking information about the carrying capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the China-Eastern Railway, as well as about troop deployments in Manchuria. These data were subsequently decisive in the Japanese victory at Port Arthur.

 For information: The Trans-Siberian Railway, the world’s longest railway, was built between 1891 and 1916 between Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok, linking the European part of Russia with the Far East. The China-Eastern Railway in the north-east of China was built by Russia between 1897 and 1903.

Screenplay by: Elena Prokhorova, Alexey Kirichenko, Xenia Shergova, Valeriy Tur