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Movies

Russian Movies

Nostalghia

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s first film made outside of the USSR, a Russian intellectual conducting research in Italy becomes overwhelmed by a melancholic longing for home. Newly restored in 4K from the original camera negative, Tarkovsky’s late masterpiece is a mystical and mysterious collision of East and West, shot with tactile beauty.

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

With Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, iconic filmmaker Werner Herzog embarks on another unforgettable journey into the heart of a remote natural environment. Deep in the Siberian wilderness, leagues away from civilization, a mere 300 people inhabit the village of Bakhta on the Yenisei river. This outpost can only be reached in two ways: boat and helicopter. There is no running water, no medical aid or even a single telephone. The locals, whose daily routines have hardly changed over the centuries, live self-reliantly according to their cultural traditions. Through insightful narration by Herzog, Happy People follows a few veteran Siberian trappers through the Taiga's four seasons to tell the incredible story of a society untouched by modernity.

The Notorious Mr. Bout

After an intense sting operation by the U.S. government in Thailand, the career of internationally known arms smuggler, Viktor Bout, came to a decisive end. What led up to this sensational arrest was the epic life of a man veiled by the obscurity of post-Soviet Russia; a war profiteer, aerial delivery tycoon and international arms dealer with an empire so vast he was dubbed "The Merchant of Death." In sharp contrast to this cartoon-like super-villain persona is another Bout: a philosophical family man who built his business from the ground up, traveling the world with an old-school camcorder and filming his adventures all along the way. With unprecedented access to his peculiar and salacious moments, the basis of Hollywood's Lord of War comes to life in this richly drawn portrait, the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir.

The Student

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 claim that it is "against his religion.” As Venya is finally exempted by the school’s devout principal, he grows confident that his strict and rigorous study of the Bible gives him the ability to manipulate all forms of authority. Challenged by a teacher who refuses to consent to his dogma, he sets out to eliminate her and subdue an entire community. At a time when arguments over the teaching of religion in public schools are prominent in the media, this wildly escalating classroom drama — based on a play by German playwright Marius von Mayenburg — serves as a frightening cautionary tale.

Sunstroke

1920. The final days of Imperial Russia: the Communist revolution is underway. The last soldiers loyal to the Tsar are held in a prison camp awaiting Moscow’s decision regarding their fate. The Lieutenant recalls his encounter, years before, with a beautiful and enigmatic woman. During the course of a steam boat journey their paths crossed briefly. The Woman was married, and The Lieutenant himself engaged, but despite every obstacle, the attraction was overpowering. Their "sunstroke", as they called it, led them into a night of passion, a single night of such sensual intensity that The Lieutenant remembers it to this day, even now clinging to this memory of an opulent Russia and a better life. Director Nikita Mikhalkov delivers an epic saga, skillfully moving from laughter to tears, from lightness to intense drama, told through a cavalcade of colourful and touching characters, painting a dreamlike and magnificent portrait of Russia recalled during the glory days before its fall. A film firmly in the tradition of Visconti’s The Leopard.

Mirror

A subtly ravishing passage through the halls of time and memory, this sublime reflection on twentieth-century Russian history by Andrei Tarkovsky (STALKER) is as much a poem composed in images, or a hypnagogic hallucination, as it is a work of cinema. In a richly textured collage of varying film stocks and newsreel footage, the recollections of a dying poet flash before our eyes, his dreams mingling with scenes of childhood, wartime, and marriage, all imbued with the mystical power of a trance. Largely dismissed by Soviet critics on its release because of its elusive narrative structure, MIRROR has since taken its place as one of the director’s most renowned and influential works, a stunning personal statement from an artist transmitting his innermost thoughts and feelings directly from psyche to screen.

Battleship Potemkin

In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.

Dear Comrades!

When the communist government raises food prices in 1962, the rebellious workers from the small industrial town of Novocherkassk go on strike. The massacre which then ensues is seen through the eyes of a devout party activist.

Aleksandr Nevskiy

It is the 13th century, and Russia is overrun by foreign invaders. A Russian knyaz', or prince, Alexander Nevsky, rallies the people to form a ragtag army to drive back an invasion by the Teutonic knights. This is a true story based on the actual battle at a lake near Novgorod.

Donbass

In the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, mid-2010s: a hybrid war takes place, involving an open armed conflict alongside killings and robberies on a mass scale perpetrated by Russian-separatist gangs. In the Donbass, war is called peace, propaganda is uttered as truth, and hatred is declared to be love. Life is suffused with fear and suspicion. What is real and what is fake news? Called "a darkly satirical omnibus of scathing vignettes" by the Washington Post, DONBASS serves as a crucial interpretation of the Russo-Ukrainian war, but the film is not, ultimately, a tale of one region or one conflict. It is about a world lost in post-truth and fake identities. It is about each and every one of us. "There is no other antiwar film quite like Donbass" (Los Angeles Times).

Generation P

Victor Ginzburg’s film Generation P is, in many ways, built on hallucinations, including Che Guevara’s speech on how television destroys man. But this parallel, virtual universe also offers a glimpse of real life in Moscow’s meticulously reconstructed Roaring 1990s, where the real plot unfolds. Babylen Tatarsky, having rediscovered himself as an employee of an advertisement agency, is busy concocting marketing campaigns for western brands, adapting them to the “Russian mentality.” Packed with special effects and unexpected revelations, the film tells the story of how former Soviet Komsomol Youth turned into advertisers in the service of the Goddess Ishtar, and how the Pepsi Generation chose Coca-Cola.Though delivered in the rapid-patter style of classic Thirties screwball farce, the mordant and ironic humor of Generation P, adapted from Victor Pelevin's iconic Russian bestseller, has more in common with the metaphysical modernity of Williams Burroughs and Gibson. Set in the ground zero of gangster globalism and driven by a truly manic energy, Generation P is at once a comedy, a tragedy, and a documentary fantasy about the disappearing lines between above and below, government and business, legal and illegal, and reality and digitally manufactured doubles.

Servants

In Czechoslovakia, 1980, the totalitarian Communist regime demands allegiance from all its subjects, including the clergy. Servants follows Michal and Juraj, two conflicted novitiates whose seminary is under increasing pressure by the Party to mold its students into satisfactory citizens. With the school on the brink of dissolution, and its head priest a target for blackmail, Michal and Juraj will have to choose between collaborating with the government as informants, or becoming targets of the secret police. Shot in striking, atmospheric black-and-white, Servants is both a brooding morality tale and a taut political thriller "that jitters and shivers with anti-authoritarian sentiment beneath its serene monochrome aesthetic" (Variety).

Our Blood is Wine

Filmmaker Emily Railsback and award-winning sommelier Jeremy Quinn journey to the Republic of Georgia, thought to be the birthplace of wine, to explore the renewal of 8,000-year-old winemaking traditions all but lost during the period of Soviet rule. Providing intimate access to rural family life and ancestral legacies of modern Georgian winemakers through immersive iPhone photography, Railsback reveals an intricate and resilient society that has survived regular foreign invasion and repeated attempts to eradicate Georgian culture. The revival of traditional winemaking techniques unique to Georgia is the central force driving this proudly independent nation to forge its 21st century identity.

Golden Voices

Raya (Maria Belkin) and Victor (Vladimir Friedman) built a shared career as the Soviet Union’s most beloved film dubbers, translating the work of Federico Fellini and Stanley Kubrick into Russian over the decades. Upon the collapse of the USSR in 1990, the Jewish couple must immigrate to Israel and reinvent themselves to find employment. As they strive to acclimate to their adopted home, opportunities for first-rate vocal performances are few and far between. Raya answers a help wanted ad searching for women with “pleasant voices” and finds herself catering to a lonely Russian community as a phone-sex operator, while Victor falls in with a band of black market film pirates from the VHS underground. A charming comedy about disrupting old dynamics, starting anew, and rediscovering yourself in the most unexpected places, GOLDEN VOICES is also a stirring tribute to the redemptive power of cinema.

Covert Games

After the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Yugoslav army pulls out of Kosovo region, leaving Serbian people at the mercy of the Albanian UCK terrorists. A small band of soldiers must take over an airport, and hold it until the peacekeepers arrive.

The Fencer

Fleeing from the Soviet secret police, Estonian fencer Endel Nelis returns to his homeland and finds work as a children's sports instructor. Despite the objections of school administrators, Nelis begins teaching the students competitive fencing techniques and fencing soon becomes a form of self-expression for them. Endel quickly becomes a role model and father figure to the children, many of whom have been orphaned as a result of the Russian occupation. When the children are invited to a fencing tournament in Leningrad, Nelis must make a choice: put his safety first or risk everything to take the children to the competition. Directed by acclaimed Finnish filmmaker Klaus Härö, THE FENCER is a touching drama about trust, love and finding one’s purpose.

The Whaler Boy

15-year-old Leshka lives in an isolated village on the Bering Strait. Like most men where he lives, he is a whale hunter. When internet arrives in the village, Leshka becomes infatuated with a webcam model from America - so far away and yet almost close enough to see across the waters of the Strait. Coming of age in the male-dominated whaling community, Leshka's encounter with this mysterious woman awakens in him a desire to find love outside of the confines of his tiny world. He becomes determined to meet her in real life, setting forth on a dangerous adventure across the raging waters of the sea. Featuring stunning photography of the dramatic landscape, and punctuated by off-kilter humor, "there’s an almost fable-like simplicity to this atmospheric coming of age story" (Screen Daily) about the division between two worlds.

III - The Ritual

During the outbreak of a mysterious deadly epidemic devastating a rural European village, sisters Ayia and Mirra promise their dying mother to look after each other to the end of their lives. When Mirra, the younger sister, falls victim to the epidemic, Ayia in desperation realizes that conventional medicine will not save her sister. At the local priest’s house, Ayia discovers a collection of Shamanic books containing a series of mystic drawings which she deciphers as a ritual for spiritual healing which she believes will save her sister. The Shamanic cure involves a complete immersion into the patient’s mind, a journey into the deepest, most hidden depths of their subconscious where terrifying monsters and demons reside. Will Ayia succeed when she faces the obscure depths of her sister’s subconscious where terrifying monsters may lie in waiting? The closer to the bottom of the ocean, the darker it gets...

In the Fog

It is 1942 and the western edge of the USSR is under German occupation. In the region, local partisans are waging a brutal battle against their foreign enemies. Sushenya, an innocent rail worker, is arrested with a band of saboteurs when a train is derailed not far from his village. The German officer decides to set him free rather than hang him with the others, but rumors of Sushenya's treason spread quickly and partisans Burov and Voitik seek revenge. Captured by the partisans, Sushenya is led through the forest where they are ambushed. Soon he finds himself one-on-one with his wounded enemy, forced to make a moral choice under immoral circumstances. From the critically acclaimed director of MY JOY.

The Tundra Book: A Tale of Vukvukai, The Little Rock

72 years have passed as deer herder Vukvukai lives in the depths of Chukotka. He is an old man full of energy and wisdom—The Real Man of Tundra whose life can not be seen apart from the deer. His people take care of a huge herd—over 14,000 deer. Their life is a non-stop struggle for survival and well-being in the most harsh weather conditions of Chaun-Chukotka. They deeply believe in the strength of tradition and so succeed in their struggle. The ancient culture of Nomadic Chukchi takes care of them, so they preserve and follow it. As far as it is now—their realm remains stable. This is the Truth of Vukvukai.

Saint Petersburg

Elliot is about to depart from London on a working holiday to Russia when he discovers that his father has a love child in Saint Petersburg. He vows not to meet his half-brother, Fyodor, but when he loses his job he is forced to make contact. The two brothers connect and it appears as if they may be able to form a relationship, until Elliot meets Fyodor’s girlfriend, Anya, and falls instantly in love with the beautiful dancer. Anya too finds herself drawn to Elliot, setting off a love triangle against a backdrop of white nights and endless summer days in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The Iron Ivan

Ivan Poddubny was a rare champion, having a professional career for over 40 years. This richly rendered biopic follows the incredible journey of an early 20th century world celebrity, from his modest roots in rural Russia, to the world stage in Paris and 1920s America.

Vassilisa the Beautiful

The film is based on a popular Russian folk tale. There once lived a father who had three sons. His two elder sons, Anton and Agafon, had chosen themselves regular girls for brides, but the youngest one, Ivanushka, brought to his home a frog from the marshes. The father was very much surprised, but didn’t say anything. However, the frog was actually a beautiful girl, Vassilisa, over whom Gorynych the Serpent had cast a spell. Vassilisa refused to marry the monster and he turned her into a frog. But Ivanushka did not renounce his love. He had to overcome many obstacles before he returned to Vassilisa her former appearance and killed the three-headed dragon.

Maidan

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, MAIDAN chronicles the civil uprising that toppled the government of Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovich and has since developed into an international crisis between Russia and the West. Filmed in stunning long takes, sans commentary, MAIDAN is a record of a momentous historical event and an extraordinary study of the popular uprising as a social, cultural and philosophical phenomenon.

Tortured for Christ

This cinematic retelling of the testimony of Pastor Richard Wurmbrand features live-action reenactments of the events that are laid out in the bestseller Tortured for Christ.

Give Me Liberty

Medical transport driver Vic is late, but it’s not his fault. Roads are closed for a protest, and no one else can shuttle his Russian grandfather and émigré friends to a funeral. The new route uproots his scheduled clients, particularly Tracy (Lauren “Lolo” Spencer in a breakout performance), a vibrant young woman with ALS. As the day goes from hectic to off-the-rails, their collective ride becomes a hilarious, compassionate, and intersectional portrait of American dreams.

Pavlensky: Life Naked

Petr Pavlensky, artist and activist, is in the vanguard of forging social change in Russia. Through an array of courageous performances, he acts as society's conscience in the face of an increasingly totalitarian state. From lying naked in a coil of barbed wire, to nailing his scrotum to the floor of Red Square, his acts of defiance aim to spark debate and catalyse reform. This doc follows his mission to challenge the state.

Ivan the Terrible

During the early part of his reign, Ivan the Terrible faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people.

Iron Ivan

He was a champion among champions. In middle age he defeated young and very strong athletes, and always was a gentleman. But arose up a power that overcome him - that was love.

Welcome to Chechnya

This searing investigative documentary work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ pogrom raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity -- and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil. Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France (HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE).

Movie Genres