Discoveries from Soviet Union World Cinema

A film adaptation of Rodion Shchedrin's ballet staged by the USSR State Ballet Theater.

Marcis Seglins, a retired factory craftsman finds a new hobby - training young workers.

The kid by the name of Tomshik recently often dreamed that he could fly. And now his dream came true! The boy was delighted with his new abilities. But the scientific fraternity became interested in such a miracle, and it became very clear that he did not fly the way he should have. And though they did not know how to do it, they began to struggle to teach Tomshik. What will their morals and experiments lead to?

A movie novel about the life of the village. Having devoted his life to his native village, Mikhail Petrovich Zubov has become somewhat coarse and even embittered by the end of his chairmanship. About this honestly and openly tells him the young party leader of the collective farm. But no matter how difficult it is for the chairman to understand the fairness of criticism, his love for the land helps Zubov to change his relations with people.

Folk masters carve sculptures and recount memories in memory of the burned Ablinga villagers.

An underage house spirit named Kuzka finds his way into a typical Soviet flat and turns the life of a little girl Natasha into a fairy tale.

About the tragedy of a family whose members are subjected to such terrible vices as drug addiction and alcoholism. The prototypes of the drama are the writer's relatives.

The young officer Sergei Lukonin faced severe trials: the war in Spain, an injury, escape from captivity, and the battles at Khalkhin Gol. Yet, he overcomes all hardships, showing courage and conviction in the justice of the cause he is fighting for.

In the compartment of the express train, worker, Hero of Socialist Labor E.I.Lebedev, director of the Zvezda plant V.G.Pershin and Doctor of Philosophy O.K.Shkaratan, to the songs of students, argue about the hierarchy and value of professions.

Based on Guram Panjikidze’s novel, The Seventh Sky, the film follows the lives of young people and workers at a metallurgical plant in Tbilisi during the 1970s. Levan Khidasheli, a talented engineer, arrives at the Rustavi metallurgical plant and quickly rises through the career ladder due to his dedication. However, he prioritises his career over friendship and love, leading to a sense of loneliness and regret when life doesn’t reward his sacrifices.

A young man keeps meeting the same girl with a violin again and again. Is it his destiny?

It was Christmas time. Three friends - a newspaper reporter, a bass player, and a lawyer - were on their way to visit someone. After buying gifts, they rushed to the train station. However, there were no seats available in the first-class compartment. In the second-class compartment, they found a lady sitting alone. However, the lady refused to let them enter the compartment. The friends decided to play a prank on the lady and took her to the train station to find out if her belongings were in the compartment. As a result, they had to pay for the lady's carriage and were unable to catch up with the train. The lady, who had seemed scandalous at first, turned out to be very nice and invited them to her house for Christmas.

In ancient times, when heraldry was in use and every self-respecting city considered it necessary to have its own coat of arms, it was placed on that coat of arms that was symbolic and lily for the city (fortress tower, deer head, scales of justice, sword or something else, something especially revered). To this day, it would not be worthwhile to preserve this custom and wonder what the residents of Los Angeles, the third largest city in the United States, would like to take as a symbol. They surely would - they certainly would be the California Highways. Even Americans accustomed to car herds, coming from other parts of the country to California, finding themselves in Los Angeles and its suburbs, marvel at the empty weaving of concrete and asphalt belts filled to the brim with gasoline carriages...

The film tells a story about non-democratic and non-legal social events in the country of Azerbaijan.

In a remote Kyrgyz village, a mother navigates daily life as her family is drawn into the upheaval of World War II. Left behind to tend the land and hold her household together, she clings to hope amid growing uncertainty. As seasons pass, the quiet weight of absence and memory shapes her world. A deeply personal story of endurance, Mother’s Field captures the emotional cost of war from the perspective of those who wait.

A young country girl who becomes an apple seller is seduced and abandoned. She finds a protector but when he is arrested for theft she finds honest work in a factory.

An old sailor is longing for the sea by walking along the beach. One day, he meets a group of young people by the seashore, forgets his age, and jumps into the waves with them.

Bill Parker, a sailor in the English Merchant Navy faces rudeness from the ship captain and is kicked off. However, he finds solace in a Soviet logging truck, where he meets Sydney, a representative from a Western company buying timber from Soviet Russia. He supports a stokers' strike and is offered an assistant position at a woodworking plant. Russia surprises Bill with its unique aspects. The film is considered lost.

Based on the story "Wherever You Are" by James Gunn. A young scientist, Mat, is writing a dissertation on the topic “Psychodynamics of Witchcraft” and is trying to prove that the phenomena described in historical witch trials cannot exist. But one day he meets a young village girl, Ebi, who has supernatural powers, and falls in love with her. Human feelings and the excitement of a scientist begin to fight within him...

After working for four difficult years in the Far North, extracting timber in the taiga, Bulgarian Angel Naydenov and Russian Nikolai Pavlov, leaders of a large timber industry enterprise, became friends, as it turned out, forever. And now, meeting a friend at the Sofia airport, Naydenov recalls joint successes and defeats.

The film is about the first oil-well in the world in the world in the 1920th.

Six-grader Sasha is a very talented artist but he doesn't to show his paintings to anyone.

The film describes the spiritual quest of a young hero whose prototype is georgian writer Guram Rcheulishvili.

During the final months of the World War II, a group of special forces sailors, under the command of Lieutenant Balandin, receives a secret order of special importance to destroy enemy tankers, seaplanes and gun installations to ensure the free landing of their troops.

The building of blast furnaces Magnitogorsk and the Kubas Basin by Komsomol, the Communist Union of youth, as part of Stalin’s first five-year plan.

Despite protests from the engineer Gafur Kayumov, the head of the design bureau, Tursunov, and his accomplices pushed an unfinished cotton-harvesting machine into production. As a result, millions in state funds were wasted.

Dedicated to the memory of L.I. Brezhnev.

The film tells the story of how a sense of patriotism, responsibility and love for the Motherland united the residents of the Ukrainian village of Troianivka during World War II.

How friends punished a bully cat.

About the life of civil War hero Sergei Lazo, from the day of his baptism to the last minute.

A young Belarussian man joins Soviet partisans in order to fight Polish occupational forces in Belarus.

In this farcical dark comedy/melodrama, Lena manages to lose her place at college by virtue of throwing a minor hissy-fit when she catches her erstwhile boyfriend in bed with another girl. Instead of penalizing the boy for his behavior, Lena gets stuck with a court appearance and must pay a small fine, in addition to losing a boyfriend, her college career, and an apartment. Lena belongs to a film club which occasionally hands out awards, and the membership of it decides to send her into the Russian hinterlands to hand out an award to an obscure filmmaker. Throughout the film, Lena has been associated with a bizarre con man named Stepanych who, when his cons fall through, comes to her in the distant town she has gone to seeking her help in committing suicide.

In this ten-minute documentary experiment, director Herz Frank films a group of children watching a puppet show, keeping the camera fixed on their faces in a single continuous shot. The performance itself remains unseen, while the children’s shifting expressions—fear, laughter, curiosity, and suspense—suggest the story unfolding before them as ten minutes of their lives quietly pass.

Oleg Yefremov was one of the most beloved actors and directors in Russia. He was the founder of the Sovremennik (Contemporary) Theatre and later became the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theatre. The film shows him in a moment of extreme dramatic tension: Yefremov has decided to split the repertory company into two. His aim is to re energize a stagnant group of actors and move them away from an artistic "dead end". The company, split into supporters and detractors discusses the situation on very heated terms. The situation mirrors the overall climate of a country and a society shaken by the changes brought about by perestroika.

The film is set in a Turkmen village in the early years of collectivization. With the arrival of the new regime, much has changed. The film's protagonist, Ataniyaz, is overcome with agonizing doubts about what to do next. Bahram Khan, who has arrived from abroad, suggests that Ataniyaz take all his wealth and leave the country. But moving flocks of sheep is no easy task: it requires loyal shepherds. Now Ataniyaz-bai pins all his hopes on the young shepherd Kerim, who is passionately in love with his daughter, Ziba.

The movie travels through the 20th century by monitoring a steam boiler. We see the history of Estonia through life, agricultural work and people at different times.

A porcupine, a jerboa, and a turtle build a wooden ship in the desert.

Based on Kyrgyz fairytales.

The first movie about the actor who became the creator and symbol of Ukrainian poetic cinema Ivan Mykolaichuk, released 2 years after his death.

After failing to get into college, Galya finished flight attendant training and started flying with navigator Viktor, who happened to witness her failures and supported her during difficult times. A year passed quickly, and she became a college student. But on her last flight, there were two gangsters among the passengers.

The young music teacher Gulnora Rakhimovna, coming to school, initially encounters indifference to her subject both from schoolchildren and work colleagues. But with his desire to introduce children to the wonderful world of music, he wins the love and recognition of students and respect from other teachers.

The heroine of the film Karagoz Alimbayeva comes from the village, where she worked as a zoo technician for five years, to the city to enter the veterinary institute. Having brilliantly passed the profile subjects, Karagoz gets a three on the last physics exam and, having failed to get one point, must return to the village.

Ants Jõgi (1892-1983) is a dignified gentleman whose main profession in life has been acting. He also has a spirit of an artist and an artisan. The 85-year-old man is lonely and has to go to a retirement home. Director Leida Laius' documentary tells a story about the life and work of the old actor as well as contemplates on the true values of life, old man's connections to the present and the past. The thoughts of the wise old man are enchanting with their simplicity and warmth.

Composed of two narrative layers. The first layer includes a visit to the cinema (including a projectionist) and a reflection on their perception and experiencing the projection. The second layer is the projected work, ie film in film. This is based on the structure of the myth: at the beginning we see a tree that seems to refer to the tree (life or knowledge) in Eden. This is followed by a correlation of the images of Michelangelo Buonarroti's The Creation of Adam (1512) and other Renaissance works. The following shots from the Nazi concentration camps, ie the presentation of manifestations of human evil, are then an allegory of the fall of a man who was the result of the original sin in paradise.

A musical cartoon about how a lonely old man wanted to get rid of the cockroaches infesting his home.

The plot is based on the eponymous fable by Ivan Krylov.

After the novel of the same name of B.Bayramov. The film is about life during war, about postwoman.

For the first time, Natasha saw Elektron Yevdokimov at the Polytechnic Museum, where she came with Feliks. Then she really liked the confident speaker. Relations with Feliks didn't work out, and Natasha, leaving home, became a flight attendant — that is what she called her new profession. Once in a cafe, before the next flight, Natasha saw Yevdokimov. They met and began to meet. They experience their feelings for each other in different ways. By the power of her love, Natasha makes Yevdokimov understand what love is.

Village man Hambo, trying to set up his son Gikor, gives him in service of well-to-do merchant Bazaz Artem. Gikor couldn't find neither cordiality, nor kindness in merchant's house and misses his home. Some envy small bailiff but nobody see his sufferings.

A lyric comedy about eight-graders, their life and first love...

Villagers carry out a brutal vigilante trial against Hanna—they believe she is a witch and blame her for all their misfortunes. A young priest saves the woman from being killed and takes her into his home. With Hanna’s arrival, sinister events begin to unfold around the church, and the “witch” is not the only apparition to haunt the village in those days.

A gentleman and his friend attended an exhibition of new art where modernist artists exhibited their ridiculous works. Among them is a dead rat on a tray. The gentleman buys the "work" and invites the authors to his house for dinner, warning that it will be as original as their painting. The assembled guests intend to honor the invited modernists by smearing them with raspberry jam. The artists run around the room and finally hide under the table. After apologizing to themselves, they leave the reception.

Made in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Professor Mamlock was one of the first films worldwide to tackle Nazi anti-Semitism openly. Based on a play by a German-Jewish exile in Moscow, Friedrich Wolf, and directed by an Austrian-Jewish exile in Moscow, Herbert Rappaport, the film tells with the story of an apolitical humanitarian Jewish doctor and his politically-aware, fascism-resisting son, an intern, as their lives become entangled with the Nazis’ rise to power in 1930s Germany, where they live and practice. Things come to a head when the Nazi organization takes control of their hospital, and place a rabid antisemitic physician in charge over Mamlock and his staff.

One of the neighbors, Viktor Efimovich Rachkov, was repeatedly visited by the devil. He went to the police, but they asked for a description of the offender. Well, what kind of description can you give for the devil? So, he had to move out of his apartment, and in his place settled his mysterious nephew – a soloist of a gypsy ensemble. And where there's one gypsy, there are others. But let’s not reveal the whole intrigue...

On the struggle of artisanal peasants against the economic oppression by the kulaks.