“Road check”, “Twenty days without war”, “My friend Ivan Lapshin”, “Khrustalev, car!” – these films, mysterious and powerful, add up to the phenomenon of Alexei German. His cinema is one of the most significant and least studied phenomena in world art of the last half century. From many hours of conversations with the director, Anton Dolin learned, if not everything, then the most important thing about the origin of the master, his parents, his wartime childhood, his youth during the Thaw, and his ordeals in the labyrinths of Soviet cinematography. He found out how a new film language was born, figured out who Lapshin and Khrustalev really are and what to expect from German’s fifth full-length film, which has been in the works for more than ten years. The heroes of this book are not only German himself, but also many others: Konstantin Simonov and Philip Ermash, Rolan Bykov and Andrei Mironov, Georgy Tovstonogov and Evgeny Schwartz. Between fact and fable, myth and history, cinema and literature, these stories are about memory, time and work, which imperceptibly turns into art. The book also includes an essay by Anton Dolin - a kind of guide to Herman's films. The appendix publishes for the first time a script by Alexey German and Svetlana Karmalita, based on the prose of Rudyard Kipling.