“We didn’t invite any celebrities. The authors of the [Crush] are friends we love. And we got a chance to get together and to be a little naughty. The rules were simple: each director was bound not only by the common topic and the format of a short movie but also by a very moderate budget. All the directors were shooting their films simultaneously, each with his own crew, and none of them knew what the films of the other four directors were about. The footage became a whole only at the editing stage. The result of this game is a group portrait of the new generation of Russian filmmakers.” Five of Russia’s most exciting emerging filmmakers each contribute one segment of an omnibus of love stories. The result was [Crush]. The five stories ? about a psychiatric patient, a journalist, a shoemaker, a streetwalker, and a freshly released convict ? connect together not as a single narrative, but as five independent statements about modern romance and the fearlessness it takes to pursue it.