Directed by Aleksandr Ptushko • Drama • With Anna Orochko, Urho Somersalmi, Andris Osins • 1959 • 91 minutes

Based on the Finnish national epic "Kalevala," director Aleksandr Ptushko's ravishing, mystical fantasy tells the story of a sinister witch Louhi (Anna Orochko) who covets the Sampo, a ma...

Directed by Aleksandr Ptushko • Drama • With Valeri Kozinets, Natalya Petrova, Vladimir Fyodorov • 1972 • 145 minutes

The final film from Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko (ILYA MUROMETS, SAMPO), RUSLAN AND LUDMILA was a glorious and magical summation of his career. Based on an epic fairy...

Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov • Drama • With Vladimir Menshov, Leonid Filatov • 1988 • 102 minutes

Part Kafka, part Agatha Christie and part Monty Python, Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov's surreal satire of Communism follows an Everyman engineer named Varakin (Leonid Filatov) who arrives in...

Directed by Jessica Gorter • Documentary • 2024 • 96 minutes

Yuri Dmitriev exhumes what the Russian rulers would rather forget. After years of searching the pine forests of Karelia in northwestern Russia, he discovers a mass grave containing thousands of people who were secretly executed during ...

Directed by Paul Mitchell, Anastasiya Popova • Documentary • 2023 • 54 minutes

Despite the huge risks, two Russian filmmakers have been filming the impact of the invasion of Ukraine in their country.

The filmmakers get rare access to the brave Russians who are willing to speak out against their...

Directed by Georgiy Daneliya • Drama • With Stanislav Lyubshin, Levan Gabriadze • 1986 • 133 minutes

Imagine Andrei Tarkovsky circa Solaris directing Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and you'll come close to the existential weirdness of this loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy. Two...

Directed by Valeri Rubinchik • Drama • With Elena Dimitrova, Boris Plotnikov • 1980 • 127 minutes

Part folk horror, part supernatural mystery, the long-unseen THE SAVAGE HUNT OF KING STAKH is a melancholy, chilling mixture of Terry Gilliam, Italian Gothic Horror, 1960s Hammer Films and THE WICKE...

Directed by Laurynas Bareiša • Drama • With Giedrius Kiela, Gabija Bargailaite • 2021 • 92 minutes

A work of fiction that emerges directly from elements of reality: a newspaper article, the space occupied by a small town, and its surroundings. A young man (Giedrius Kiela) and a young woman (Gabi...

Directed by Aleksandr Ptushko • Drama • With Boris Andreyev, Shukur Burkhanov, Ninel Myshkova • 1956 • 92 minutes

Legendary fantasy filmmaker Aleksandr Ptushko’s sweeping, visual F/X-filled epic is one of his most enchanting achievements: a stunning Cinemascope ballad of heroic medieval knights,...

Directed by Dmitry Bogolyubov • Documentary • 2019 • 82 minutes

With few exceptions, Yelnyans raise their children to become good patriots. They don’t mind the eerie, all-encompassing militarization of society. A heroic Soviet past and a destitute post-industrial present make this provincial tow...

Directed by Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko • Documentary • 2023 • 98 minutes

On February 24, 2022, Yevhen Titarenko didn’t have to puzzle over what he should do. He went to the front. And from the first minute of Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine, he began to record everything ...

Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov • Drama • With Malcolm McDowell, Oleg Yankovsky • 1991 • 103 minutes

THE ASSASSIN OF THE TSAR is a mysterious psychological drama / thriller in which the tormented chambers of a patient's mind come to warp everything around him, even the folds of history itself. Ma...

Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov • Drama • With Malcolm McDowell, Oleg Yankovsky • 1991 • 105 minutes

THE ASSASSIN OF THE TSAR is a mysterious psychological drama / thriller in which the tormented chambers of a patient's mind come to warp everything around him, even the folds of history itself. Ma...

Directed by Kirill Serebrennikov • Drama • With Pyotr Skvortsov, Viktoriya Isakova, Yuliya Aug • 2016 • 118 minutes

After Venya’s mother receives a call from school reporting her son’s refusal to participate in mixed swimming lessons, she first suspects her teenager of being shy and derides his ...

Directed by Kateryna Gornostai • Drama • 2021 • 122 minutes

Hanging out with friends, smoking too much, spinning bottles and kissing, making mistakes, playing, refusing to accept, dreaming with open eyes – life as a teenager can be overwhelmingly beautiful and difficult at the same time. Introve...

Directed by Natalya Nazarova • Drama • With Vladimir Mishukov, Nadezhda Gorelova, Kirill Veselov • 2019 • 92 minutes

Antonina, an artist from Saint Petersburg, follows her husband, a political prisoner, to the deep north province of Russia. As she starts teaching art in a local school, she finds...

Directed by Darya Zhuk • Drama • With Alina Nasibullina, Ivan Mulin • 2018 • 93 minutes

Set a few years after Belarus gained independence in 1990, this vibrant debut feature follows the path of young Evelina, who dreams of moving to Chicago in order to pursue her passion for house music. However...

Directed by Pol Cruchten • Documentary • 2017 • 86 minutes

Based on the novel by Svetlana Alexievich, recipient of a Nobel Prize in Literature, La Supplication (Voices from Chernobyl) does not deal with Chernobyl, but rather with the world of Chernobyl, about which we know very little. Eyewitnes...

Directed by Alexander Abaturov • Documentary • 2022 • 70 minutes

In 2013, filmmaker Alexander Abaturov cousin Dima Ilukhin was killed during a Russian Special Forces (Spetsnaz) operation in the Republic of Dagestan. He was 21. The fighter who shot him in the head and was himself subsequently kil...

Directed by Tatia Skhirtladze • Documentary • With Nona Gaprindashvili, Nana Alexandria, Maia Chiburdanidze and Nana Ioseliani • 2020 • 82 minutes

Leading us to Tbilisi, Georgia, Glory to the Queen reveals the interwoven biographies of the world chess heroes Nona Gaprindashvili, Nana Alexandria,...

Directed by Sharipa Urazbayeva • Drama • With Meruert Sabbusinova • 2019 • 75 minutes

After her husband mysteriously disappears, all the hardships of survival in the cold winter period in the far away village in Kazakhstan have to be carried out by Mariam, the mother of four small kids. To save ...

Directed by Kantemir Balagov • Drama • With Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina, Andrey Bykov • 2019 • 137 minutes

In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as an...

Directed by Gael Mocaer • Documentary • 2014 • 80 minutes

"That's the fire emergency system. If there's a fire, it bursts and the water falls down," one of the mineworkers explains. He is talking about a few bags of water, all the size of a fist, somewhat haphazardly hung from the low ceiling of...

Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2016 • 114 minutes

Following Ukraine’s revolution in 2013, filmmaker Vitaly Mansky decides to travel throughout the region and visit his family. He talks on camera with family members in Ukraine, Crimea and Donetsk, hoping to gain a better understanding ...