The documentary Helicopters tells the story of a round-the-world journey undertaken by four aviation enthusiasts flying helicopters. Over the course of forty-three days, the crew travels across Europe, Africa, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, spending up to ten hours a day in the air.

The film’s protagonists are not professional aviators, but people for whom flying has become a way of life. At its center is pilot Mikhail Fariх, whose love of the sky is rooted in family history: he inherited his passion for aviation from his father and grandfather and carried it throughout his life. Fariх was one of the most active advocates of small aviation in Russia, campaigning at the legislative level for the right to fly freely and viewing restrictions as absurd.

Helicopters is a film about the collision between dream and reality, about a freedom that both attracts and destroys, and about the human desire to rise above the ground—even when the cost of that ascent becomes unbearably high.