Discoveries from Soviet Union World Cinema

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.

Neighbors, priest Sylvestr Izhekheruvymskyi and deacon Hordii Sviatoptitsyn, had a bloody feud with each other over a cherry tree that grew on the border between them and one day unexpectedly bore abundant large juicy berries. As of 2020, the tape is considered lost.

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

Before going on an overseas journey, a merchant father asks his three daughters what they would like him to bring back for them. The eldest asks for a shining tiara, the middle asks for a frame through which her face would always appear young, and the youngest (Nastenka) asks her father to bring her a beautiful scarlet flower like one which she saw in her dreams. Her elder sisters laugh at this simple wish. The father's trip is successful and he finds everything that he came for, with the exception of Nastenka's scarlet flower. Nevertheless, the ship heaves off and they begin to head back while the father scans the lands around him for a scarlet flower.

Surreal Soviet fantasy movie about a man whose love is kidnapped by the Tsar and he must save her with the help of a humpbacked horse.

The film consists of three independent parts: "Workmate", "Déjà vu" and "Operation Y". The plot follows the adventures of Shurik, the naive and nerdy Soviet student who often gets into ludicrous situations but always finds a way out very neatly.

Based on the novel of the same name by Mikhail Sholokhov, about the fate of people broken by the First World War, the October Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War in Russia (1917-1922), about the collapse of the foundations and ideals of the Don Cossacks of Russia at the beginning of the XX century, about the personal tragedy of the protagonist — Grigoriy Melekhov.

A graduate of the culinary technical school of the cook, Tosya Kislitsyna, a naive and eccentric girl, came to the village lost in the northern forests. She sticks her nose in all affairs, seeks to help everyone. She met Ilya on the day of arrival: the "first guy in the village" fell upon her indignantly, and in the evening, to brighten up an unpleasant meeting, she decided to "make happy" with an invitation to a dance and was refused. Not accustomed to refusals, Ilya argues with Filya that during the week he will fall in love with Tosya...

A political satire on one of the enemies of the Soviet regime, the leader of the English Labour Party, James Ramsay Macdonald. The plot unfolds at a fast pace, using grotesque satirical techniques to prove that the royal power in England is a fiction.

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.

An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.

A scientist builds a time machine and accidentally sends his apartment complex manager and a petty burglar to 16th century Moscow, while Tsar Ivan the Terrible travels to 1973.

A psychologist is sent to a space station orbiting a planet called Solaris to investigate the death of a doctor and the mental problems of cosmonauts on the station. He soon discovers that the water on the planet is a type of brain which brings out repressed memories and obsessions.

During the Russian Civil War, the production of a silent melodrama runs into numerous complications.

Sophiko, a well-known journalist, seems to be more close to many of her respondents when they need her advice than to her family members. All engrossed in her work, she suddenly finds out that she is losing her husband who has started a love affair with another woman. Of course, it strikes her badly but life never lets her to concentrate on her personal problems.

A little hedgehog, on the way to visit his friend the bear, gets lost in thick fog, where horses, dogs and even falling leaves take on a terrifying new aspect...

Veronika and Boris come together in Moscow shortly before World War II. Walking along the river, they watch cranes fly overhead, and promise to rendezvous before Boris leaves to fight. Boris misses the meeting and is off to the front lines, while Veronika waits patiently, sending letters faithfully. After her house is bombed, Veronika moves in with Boris' family, into the company of a cousin with his own intentions.

As the classic rightly noted, it is customary to treat the diseases of wealthy people with respect. Only a heart transplant can save the dying life of a millionaire Ferfax. In search of a suitable donor for his best client, Dr. Jones makes a series of killings. But he still does not know what reward awaits him for the services rendered ...

Year 1947... Yegor Trubnikov is giving all his powers to make life in his own Kolhoz better.

Lena, a woman in her late twenties, loves her boyfriend, but in time comes to see that their relationship serves no useful function. What's more, she sees that her friends are for the most part empty-headed lackeys, causing her to wonder just what is the point of her life.

Ivan Mirosnikov, a cheeky young man in the Gorbachev era, is trying to figure out what to do with his life (he's not in college, and the 2-year mandatory military service is looming large ahead of him). Meanwhile, he lives with his divorced mother, and works as a courier at a Russian newspaper. Through his job, he meets patronizing Professor Kuznetzov and his rebellious daughter Katya. To annoy the professor, Ivan claims to have an affair with Katya. To his surprise, Katya backs his story up.

Young boy dreams of himself as a version of Gulliver who has landed in Lilliput suffering under capitalist inequality and exploitation.

Young journalist starts working on the ship in order to write a story. The only problem is - all the ships crew are young girls.

The life of the revered 18th-century Armenian poet and musician Sayat-Nova. Portraying events in the life of the artist from childhood up to his death, the movie addresses in particular his relationships with women, including his muse. The production tells Sayat-Nova's dramatic story by using both his poems and largely still camerawork, creating a work hailed as revolutionary by Mikhail Vartanov.

A lonely thirty year-old woman lives in a small apartment on the edge of town. She meets a man, life looks brighter, but she suspects he’s hiding something from her.

The station keeper Kruglikov was exiled to a remote Siberian village many years ago for shooting his superior, a general, who demanded that he go with him as a matchmaker to Kruglikov's favorite girl, Raya. A political exile is brought to the station. She turns out to be Raya. For a few minutes the former bride and groom were together, and then she was taken away again.

A Soviet propaganda film based on material from the Bolshevik coup. During the Russian civil war, the Whites, that anti-Communist force that fought against the Bolsheviks during that period, capture a Jewish Ukranian village; the gang commander threatens a pogrom, and will kill everyone in the village unless the inhabitants agree to give to the White Officers five virgin girls in wedding dresses. Under such terrible pressure, the Jewish council of the town decides, full of sorrow and despair, to sacrifice their daughters to the drunken officers but fortunately and just in time, a detachment of partisans that belong to the Red Army, comes and frees the village.

Shurik, a kind but naïve ethnography student, falls in love with the intelligent, athletic and beautiful All-Union Leninist Young Communist League member Nina. He has a rival in the wealthy comrade Saakhov, who concocts a kidnapping scheme to force Nina to marry him.

The Battle of Moscow is a 1985 Soviet multi-part war narrative, presenting a dramatized account of the 1941 Battle of Moscow and the events preceding it. The battle was the first major defeat of German Wehrmacht in the Second World War.

An adaptation of a story by a Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky that anticipates the Ukrainian "poetic cinema" of the '60s in its focus on star-crossed lovers and its celebration of nature. Set in the 1830s, the film follows two lovers on the run - a girl forced into marriage and her boyfriend, a serf who's being sought by the authorities - as they try to make their way to freedom.

In 1920s Moscow, shortly after the October Revolution, a stray dog named Sharik is taken in by Professor Preobrazhensky, a wealthy and respected surgeon. The professor performs a daring medical experiment on the dog that changes him into a human being. As the newly transformed Sharikov begins to navigate life in the professor’s apartment, his crude behavior and revolutionary ideas turn the household upside down.

A story about love between famous composer Johann Strauss and Russian beauty Olga.

Lovely telegraph operator Masha Stepanova is a sanitary nurse. During a training alarm, she meets a taxi driver Alexei (Alyosha) Solovyov. He reads verses to a girl and invites her to the theater. But at the appointed time, Alyosha doesn't come, and Mashenka finds him, helps to recover. Young people fell in love with each other, but Alexei was too frivolous, and brings the girl a lot of sorrows and insults. Because of Alexei’s hobby for another girl, Masha breaks up with him. But she will be able to convey her faithful and true-hearted feeling through years of separation and the hardships of wartime, and when they meet again at the front of the Finnish War, Solovyov realizes what a gift of fate was meeting him with this girl.

The film tells about the creation of the first collective farm communes and class enmity. Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields." However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.

Sergei Krylov and Oleg Tulin, are promising young physicists in the field of thunderstorms. They dream of weather control. But later their ways in science parted - Oleg is ready to tradeoff his standpoints for personal success, but Sergei knows that the truth is more critical.

The 17th century rebellion in Kakheti masterminded by Bidzina Cholokashvili gets about the whole Georgia. An Imeretian youth nicknamed as Bashi-Achuk is a real exterminator of the Persians. He attacks the Persian escort and sets free the Georgian women who were supposed to be locked up in the Shah’s harem. Bashi-Achuk’s twin sisters are among the rescued captives. Abdushahil, a Persian warrior who was defeated by Bashi-Achuk in wrestling, falls in love with Mzisa, Bashi-achuk’s sister. Mzisa brings Abdushahil to the camp of the Georgian rebels. Abdushahil learns that he is a Georgian too. As a child he was kidnapped and brought up in Persia. Abdushahil’s army gives up and the Georgians win the battle.

Day in and day out, factory worker Wolfer enjoys his luxurious life. But one day he wakes up after another night of drinking and is horrified to learn that the October Revolution has taken place. It took away the manufacturer's luxurious life. Wolfer's mansion, jewelry, and excess clothes were requisitioned. In the end, the manufacturer has to sweep the streets. He flees to Paris, where he finds a job in a circus with great difficulty.

A beautiful maiden, Marya Morevna, gives her prospective husband, the mighty warrior Nikita Kozhemyaka, three riddles to solve before she'll marry him. Before he can tell her the answers, the Russian land is invaded by the armies of Kashchey the Immortal, in whose footsteps death and destruction follow. Marya is abducted by Kashchey, and Nikita finds his home in ashes. Nikita meets a kindly wizard who gives him a cap of darkness. With it, the hero will find a way to save his bride and rout Kashchey.

Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov journeys through Italy with his interpreter Eugenia to research the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who once lived abroad. Isolated and consumed by an unrelenting longing for his homeland, Andrei becomes drawn to Domenico, a radical mystic obsessed with spiritual redemption. Through austere imagery and extended temporal rhythms, Tarkovsky examines exile, memory, and the profound melancholy of being unable to belong fully to either place or language.

After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but now must beat Napoleon himself with an Anglo Allied army.

The plane of the American pilot Hank Morgan got lost in time. The pilot falls into temporary loop and finds himself at the era of the glorious King Arthur. Here he is destined to meet the legendary knights of the Round Table and the insidious Queen Morgana - the sister of the king, the beautiful Sandy and the wise Wizard. He will find himself in the rags of a slave and in knightly armor, to witness the greatness and death of the kingdom.

A talented girl from the provincial Russian town Pasha Stroganova dreams of becoming an actress. She plays the role of Baba Yaga in the amateur theatre — and does it so organically that the visiting filmmaker offers her the most difficult role in the historical drama about Joan of Arc. She was given not only great acting talent, but the talent of deep, selfless love. A dream comes true: she is invited to the main role, and she begins a completely different life, full of real creative torment, insights and true happiness.

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.

Living together in a workers' dorm, Katerina and her friends are determined to make it in Moscow. But when a boorish cameraman forces himself on her, Katerina finds herself pregnant and alone as her friends move on. Twenty years later, Katerina is a factory director, outpacing her old roommates career-wise, yet still alone but for her daughter. Love seems possible again when she meets a genial mechanic.

Anatoly Novoseltsev is a mousy single father and office stumblebum working at a statistics bureau in Moscow. In the hopes of being promoted, he is coaxed into charming his disagreeable and seemingly unfeeling boss, Ludmila Kalugina, or "Meany" as she's otherwise known by her subordinates. Helped by his colleagues Olya and Yura, Anatoly attempts to ease the yoke of Ms. Kalugina, and what follows in the wake of his graceless manoeuvres is completely unforeseen, as he awakens a side to her not yet known, even to herself..

Jack Vosmyorkin, young American with Russian origins decides to return to Russia in order to watch October Revolution in action.

A seminary student on monastery holiday kills an old witch in a remote village. The hag then transforms into a beautiful young woman whose dying wish is for him to watch over her wake for three nights. With terrors occurring and his faith waning, he reads prayers on the overnight watch and tries to survive the supernatural encounters.

Young engineer Pavel Kaurov goes to his first destination — to the port city of Sibirsk. He is appointed to lead a group of cranes: gantry and floating. After several troubles Pavel mastered the port work and received a serious assignment. Meanwhile, his fiancee Nina, an architect by profession, is arriving in Siberia. However, besides Pavel, fellow students came to the station to meet her — Petunin's brother and sister, in whose house she is staying. Soon Annushka, who has long loved Pavel, arrives. From that day on, he had trouble after trouble. After a crane accident, which happened through his fault, the hero pulls himself together and does everything to regain the confidence of the brigade...

The village teacher asks the driver Gorlov to take her son, a first-grader, to the city and buy him a school suit. Reluctantly yielding to the woman, the driver will make friends with the boy during the trip. He will change the attitude not only towards this boy, but also towards people in general...

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.

A diamond smuggling operation goes wrong when an ordinary Soviet citizen becomes unwittingly involved, and the criminals are forced to court him to retrieve their diamonds.

The story of a man whose life was ruthlessly crippled by World War II. His wife and daughters were killed during the bombing of his village, he spent some time as a prisoner, and his only son was killed in action only a few days before the victory...

A young farmer Ivan and his lazy father Stepan try to help with the construction of the Dniprohes, but he learns that strength is not enough for a worker and joins the Communist party.

The film is based on a story by the renowned Czech writer Karel Čapek, which the filmmakers adapted to the everyday life of the region of Samegrelo in Western Georgia. Samegrelo is home to the “world record in throwing,” but the film’s protagonist only achieves this feat after being verbally insulted.

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Set during the early part of his reign, Ivan faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people. Sergei Eisenstein's final film, this is the first part of a three-part biopic of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, which was never completed due to the producer's dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's attempts to use forbidden experimental filming techniques and excessive cost overruns. The second part was completed but not released for a decade after Eisenstein's death and a change of heart in the USSR government toward his work; the third part was only in its earliest stage of filming when shooting was stopped altogether.

Mini-series set in times of WW II about Soviet underground fighters led by brave Anna Morozova. They are establishing connection with Polish people who work on German airfield. And even small victories cost a lot sometimes.