The TV series "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" will premiere on September 4 on Wink.ru.

      The premiere of Wink.ru’s most anticipated project will take place on September 4. On that day the first episode of the musical melodrama by directors Olga Dolmatovskaya and Zhora Kryzhovnikov “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears. It’s Just the Beginning” (16+) will be released; subsequent episodes will be released on Wednesdays at a rate of one per week. Wink.ru (a joint venture of Rostelecom and NMG) presents the trailer for the series. The creators of the series were inspired by Vladimir Menshov’s Oscar-winning Soviet film: the new project is based on its motifs, but the series’ authors tell a modern story that begins in the early 2000s and continues 20 years later.

      Trailer: https://wink.ru/embed/moskva-slezam-ne-verit-vse-tolko-nachinaetsya-year-2025/trailer

      At the beginning of the 2000s, Ksyusha arrives to conquer Moscow with a five-year-old child in her arms. With no money, no connections and no prospects. There is no turning back — she fled her hometown to escape her abusive husband. New friends help her survive in the capital: hardworking medical student Olya and capricious Masha, who dreams of marrying a foreigner and leaving the country... Twenty years later fate gives the friends another chance at happiness.

      The roles of the main heroines in their youth are played by Tina Stoyilkovich, Anastasia Talyzina and Maria Kamova (Mash Milash), and their grown-up counterparts by Marina Alexandrova, Yulia Topolnitskaya and Valeria Astapova respectively. The series also features Ivan Yankovsky, Ruzil Minekaev, Andrey Maksimov, Milos Bikovich, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Anton Vasiliev, Daniel Barnes, Marina Zudina, Anna Nevskaya, Slava Kopeykin, Anastasia Krasovskaya, Polina Gukhman, Valentin Antsiferov, Alexander Metelkin and others. Star cameos will include Sergei Zverev, DJ Groove, Andrey Grigoriev-Appolonov, Aurora and Mitya Fomin.

      Olga Dolmatovskaya, director: “The idea for the series belongs to Zhora Kryzhovnikov — he had long wanted to make a musical film inspired by ‘Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears’. I joined at the stage when some draft of the script had already been written. Before the film we watched a huge number of American musicals from the 1940s and 1950s. And the genre opened up to me in a new way. I fell in love with it to some extent.”

      Zhora Kryzhovnikov, director: “We rewatched the film and wanted, just like in the original, to tell the story of three friends twenty years later. And the arc of our main heroine is very similar to what Valentin Chernykh had in his script ‘Twice a Liar’. He won a screenwriting contest about Moscow and from there the script reached Vladimir Menshov. But the two friends have completely different stories, conflicts and problems. We don’t have a hockey player, we don’t have a builder. In general, everything is different for us.”

      The creators were not immediately able to decide whether the young actresses would also play the grown women. The decision came when they accidentally found the first match — the strikingly similar pair of Ksyushas: Tina Stoyilkovich and Marina Alexandrova. After that there were no doubts — Olga Dolmatovskaya and Zhora Kryzhovnikov together with casting director Anastasia Bagirova selected suitable actresses for the roles of the grown Masha and Olya.

      Tina Stoyilkovich, who played the young and naive Ksyusha, was once in her character’s position herself. The future actress came to Moscow in 2017 from Serbia with the dream of entering a theatrical university. Her counterpart in the role, Marina Alexandrova, moved to the capital alone at 16 — she also wanted to become an actress.

      Tina Stoyilkovich, actress: “Ksyusha is insanely close to me, down to the goosebumps, I feel her in my skin! And with every filming day I loved and understood her more and more. I learned a lot from her: I began to value myself more, to realize my life experience and for the first time in my life I gained a support within myself.”

      Marina Alexandrova, actress: “My character Ksenia Lavrova is a strong-willed woman in everything except love. Female wisdom helped me understand her. I recalled my own experience gained in all of life’s circumstances: in failed romances and in happy moments.”

      For Maria Kamova — the popular blogger Mash Milash — this role became her first serious film job. For it she attended stage speech and acting courses for several months.

      Maria Kamova, actress: “My character and I are very similar. We are even called the same name. We speak the same phrases, we are cheerful and strong, vulnerable and impulsive. We take equal joy in life and the moment. Only the negative experiences we’ve had in life are different. I want to say that I grew a lot as a person while working on this project. I became deeper and more sensitive in my perception of the world; besides that, I ceased to be a ‘thorn’ and learned to trust people.”

      In the series “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears. It’s Just the Beginning” the creators found an unusual way to reveal characters’ personalities and convey their emotional experiences to the audience. Music became the guide into the inner world — this idea belongs to Zhora Kryzhovnikov. The new series will feature both the biggest hits of the 2000s that everyone listened to back then and legendary songs about Moscow, but in a modern, new interpretation.

      Olga Dolmatovskaya, director: “Musical numbers are a way to show a character’s internal conflict or vulnerability in the most visual and memorable way, as well as to emphasize key moments in the plot’s development. At the same time we don’t have that many such numbers. We introduce a song when we reach an unequivocal emotional climax.”

      The stories in “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears. It’s Just the Beginning” unfold in recognizable and popular city locations. The film will feature the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment skyscraper, the Ostankino TV center and the RAMT theater. Work on the final episode was carried out on Tverskoy Boulevard. Some musical numbers were filmed in the pavilions of the Moskino film cluster, and one of the brightest and most complex scenes was filmed on Pushkin Square: it involved 200 dancers and over 100 extras. A huge amount of special equipment was used to create the lighting design for that scene. Another spectacular episode was the musical number “I Love,” which had to be filmed in the capital of Tatarstan. In the plot two characters whirl around dancing in the center of a huge fountain. The set piece was the largest mobile floral-dynamic fountain in Russia — at that time it was located in the Kazan State Circus.

      Yuri Korobeynikov, director of photography: “In our project we used different visual styles depending on the time in which the events take place. In the first part of the story, when the girls are young and the action unfolds in summer, there is a lot of dynamics and the colors are warmer on screen. When the heroines grow up, the color palette becomes colder.”

      The characters’ style is thought out down to the smallest details. Using clothes and accessories, costume designers recreated 2000s fashion, which has now enjoyed a revival. For example, the series’ heroines wear low-rise jeans — exactly the models that were fashionable back then. In addition, the characters’ outfits change according to their mood. Ksyusha, for example, wears pretty dresses during periods of being in love, and jeans and hoodies in hard times.

      The designers also prepared about a thousand complex stage costumes that were needed by the actors during the filming of musical numbers. A real find were latex costumes by Russian artist, designer and couturier Alexandra Frolova, known for her art performances. These outfits are a bright marker of the style of those years. Darya Fomina previously worked on character styling for the series “Slovo Patsana. Krov na Asfalte,” “Yolki 11,” and “I Know Who Killed You.”

      Darya Fomina, costume designer: “We were lucky to be able to get these rare latex costumes. It is important to understand that costumes in film are part of the mood and the character. They help the actor and the director bring the assigned task to life.”

      The eight-episode project will join the Wink Originals lineup (“Slovo Patsana. Krov na Asfalte” (18+), “Fisher” (18+), “Kombinatsiya” (16+), “Ballet” (18+) and others). The series was produced by the film companies Vodorod and NMG Studio with support from the Internet Development Institute (ANO “IRI”).

      In September, specially for the series premiere, the novel “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears,” completed by the screenwriter of the eponymous film Valentin Chernykh in 1994, will appear on the Wink Books service in audio format. The book is narrated by Yulia Topolnitskaya, who plays one of the main heroines in the series.

      About the series “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears. It’s Just the Beginning” (16+)

      Production: Vodorod, NMG Studio with the support of the Internet Development Institute (ANO “IRI”)

      Online cinema: Wink.ru as part of Wink Originals

      Number of episodes: 8

      Running time: episode — 50 minutes

      Genre: melodrama

      Crew

      Directors: Olga Dolmatovskaya, Zhora Kryzhovnikov

      Director of photography: Yuri Korobeynikov

      Screenwriters: Zhora Kryzhovnikov, Evgenia Khripkova, Alina Tyazhlova, Aksinya Borisova, Yulia Gulyan with participation of Olga Dolmatovskaya

      Executive producers: Mikhail Vrubel, Alexander Andryushchenko

      NMG Studio executive producers: Fyodor Bondarchuk, Dmitry Tabarchuk, Zhora Kryzhovnikov

      Wink.ru producers: Anton Volodkin, Alexander Kosarim

      Vodorod producer: Pavel Gorin

      Executive producers: Ekaterina Polezhaeva, Elena Bystrova

      Lead producer: Antonina Li

      Production designer: Eldar Karkhalev

      Costume designer: Darya Fomina

      Makeup artist: Darya Terekhova

      Starring: Tina Stoyilkovich, Anastasia Talyzina, Maria Kamova (Mash Milash), Marina Alexandrova, Yulia Topolnitskaya, Valeria Astapova, Ivan Yankovsky, Ruzil Minekaev, Andrey Maksimov, Anton Vasiliev, Milos Bikovich, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Marina Zudina, Anastasia Krasovskaya, Slava Kopeykin, Daniel Barnes, Polina Gukhman, Alena Dolgolenko, Alexandra Revenko, Vladislav Tiron, Anna Nevskaya, Valentin Antsiferov, Alexander Metelkin and others.

      Photo provided by PJSC Rostelecom.

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