“Three sisters sell the cherry orchard” — this is how the filmmakers jokingly describe their film Fireworks in the Afternoon. It tells the story of Viktor, a businessman who made his fortune selling chandeliers in the 2000s and is now about to lose his business. He also has to sell the country house where his three teenage daughters live. Viktor’s longtime business partner arrives from China to help save him — and watches the unfolding chaos with a mixture of astonishment, despair, and horror.
Fireworks in the Afternoon can be seen as a sitcom about a dysfunctional family struggling to adapt to changing times, or as a family drama — the very idea of a “dramedy” implies a combination of the comic and the tragic. But it is also a subtle exploration of the Russian national character, because one of the best ways to understand ourselves is through an encounter with the “other” — someone from a different culture.
Professional film critics recognized these qualities as well. Fireworks in the Afternoon won the Best Debut Award at the Mayak independent film festival. The respected film magazine Iskusstvo Kino included it among the ten best Russian films of 2025.
After the screening, German journalist Kerstin Holm will continue the conversation about the Russian national character. She worked in Russia for more than twenty years as a special correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine and has written several books about the country.
“Fireworks in the Afternoon” (2025)
Director: Nina Volova
Starring: Alexander Robak, Wang Bing, Darya Konyzheva, Vera Engalycheva, Maria Raskina, Olesya Sudzilovskaya
Running time: 90 min
Language: Russian with English subtitles (OmeU)
Kino Toni • Antonplatz 1, 13086 Berlin, Berlin, Germany
