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In the midst of the Chechen War, a remote psychiatric institution is left without staff leaving the patients to fend for themselves. Based on a true story.

In a Chechen city recovering after the war, a man disappears. As daily life goes on, those in search are drawn into a world where encounters with diviners and legal advisors, with the torturers and the tortured, with secret prisons and mythical lakes all become commonplace. Consolation and help only come from neighbours and relatives or accidentally met strangers people who themselves live with the loss or who are ones that have returned from where no one returns. The neighbour waits for her son and sees him in dreams almost every night even though more than five years have passed since the son was kidnapped. She does not have her son alive and she does not have him dead. The gray-haired man without an ear and with a burned hand still cannot think of life outside the prison cell. The adult son plays with the cloth rope and is dependent on his mother and sisters for most of his daily needs. What is then to live in a city where grand mosques lie next to torture prisons, where official statements are less valid than those heard at divination sessions, where pronouncements of death are occasions of joy, where streets are full of the ghostly presences of the dead and the missing; where the laughter of pain, a prayer, and a dream are the only solace? Barzakh, - a land between the living and the dead?

The deep rift between tradition and modernity, and between gendered reality and self-determination.

Nowadays, the modern rhythm of life and technological progress often coexist with the old way of living and traditional values. This phenomenon is especially strong in conservative societies. One of the most severe and ancient traditions in Chechen society is the tradition of vendetta, and one of the most emotional and dramatic is the tradition of the forgiveness of the enemy. This film shows how ancient customs are employed in the modern life. This film is about honor, dignity, justice and forgiveness.

As the mass deportations of the Chechen and Ingush peoples begin in 1944, young Daud and Seda escape to the mountains. When they get back to their native village, however, they witness a horrifying war crime.

Portrait of Nugayev, the Tchetchenian mafia leader and independence fighter.

Chechnya's struggle for independence from Russia is one of history's longest on-going conflicts. In the last decade alone, nearly 150,000 Chechen civilians have been killed in two wars with Russia; a catastrophe that is one of the most underreported humanitarian crises of our time. Mountain Men & Holy Wars examines the roots of this bloody and protracted war. Filmmaker Taran Davies sets out to trace the life and legacy of Imam Shamil, the legendary warrior who led Chechnya's first rebellion against Russia and who is today the muse of Chechnya's struggle for independence. Davies and his colleagues travel to the site of Shamil's defeat, meet a man who claims to have had a life transforming vision of the Imam, uncover signs of the deadly Chechen tradition of vendetta & drink tea with Shamil's great great granddaughter. But Davies' journey takes an extraordinary turn when he encounters Imam Shamil's most violent legacy; the contemporary Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. Basayev is Russia's most wanted terrorist & the man some believe is the reincarnation of Imam Shamil. Mountain Men and Holy Wars is the first film to explore the roots of Islamic radicalism and terror in Chechnya. We learn from the story of Imam Shamil that history is repeating itself in a conflict that neither the Russians, nor the West can ever win by force. We learn that Holy War in the Chechnya is far from over.

The story of two lovers parted by old Nakh custom of bride-napping.

Adam and Islam are two brothers, separated in babyhood during first Chechen war. 20 years later Islam almost finds his brother.

The story of Paris and the beautiful Helen, the Trojan War, in which the king of Ithaca Odysseus was also involved, his cunning plan with the wooden horse, with which the Greeks conquered Troy, and other adventures that befell Odysseus during his ten years of wandering, on the way home.

Chechen Human Rights activist Zainap Gashaeva is on a mission. She wants the world to wake up to the genocide happening in her country. She and her women comrades are putting their lives on the line. Will the world listen?

In 1996, during the first Chechnyan war, Florent Marcie, a young French director travels through Chechnya in the cold of winter to meet those "indomitable Chechens", a defiant nation in resistance.