Six Degrees of Celebration 1914

Six Degrees of Celebration 1914 (Yolki 1914, 2014) is a Russian holiday anthology you can watch online on iFILM. Nine short films, nine directors — including Alexander Kott, Yuri Bykov and Andrei Kavun — each telling a separate story that folds into a shared Christmas Eve. The setting: the Russian Empire, December 1914, a hundred years before the franchise's present-day episodes.

Nobles, peasants, the imperial family, soldiers from the front, poets, figure skaters — all waiting on the same miracle. The cast runs to nearly two dozen names: Konstantin Khabensky, Alexander Domogarov, Maria Poroshina, Sergei Svetlakov, Ivan Urgant. Seeing Khabensky in a tsarist-era uniform is a genuine surprise for anyone who knows this series, and that shift in setting is exactly what makes part four unlike the rest.

Stream Six Degrees of Celebration 1914 online on iFILM.