The documentary "Nicholas's Hill" shows, like Anton Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchards", a cross-section of Russian society on the threshold of a new epoch. The film's characters are successors of the landowners of a pine wood on embankment of the river Moskva, which was allocated by the Soviet government in 1924 to outstanding scientists and artists.
"Dachas and summer residents - that's so vulgar", says the aesthete Ranevskaya in Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard" when resisting the division of her land into small plots. But progress was relentless, and the old "Cherry Orchard" had to be sold and chopped down, so that in its place a new way of life could emerge. Everything repeats itself.
Source : Kinotavr