Discoveries from Soviet Union World Cinema

A story about two teenagers and their life during WWII in Urals district of Russia.

Country girl Nadia moves to the city and becomes a maid in Valya's apartment. Valya, who is a member of the local District Committee, does not know that Nadia fell in love with her currently absent husband, a geologist named Maksim, when he had visited Nadia's village during a recent expedition.

Having lived for his pleasure most of his life, floor polisher Ivan Karetnikov, on the threshold of his 60th birthday, did not for the first time leave his next wife himself, but she abandoned him, moreover, in public. In addition to these troubles, he was fired from his job, replaced by a mechanical polisher. In this difficult moment, Karetnikov remembered the first wife, and then the second and third. But turning to each of them, he seems to begin to lose hope of seeing compassion for himself.

Adventurous movie based on classical Robert Louis Stevenson novel.

Basically, the action of the film takes place in a madhouse. But the absurdity has no boundaries, it has only a cause. And in this total madness the characters try to find the answers.

An amazing story about how Tevye the Dairyman, a poor man burdened with a family, was suddenly made happy by an extraordinary event, one worthy of description. It is told by Tevye himself and passed on word for word.

The film tells about two elderly widows who live in the same house. They are united not only by tragedy, but also by common concern, namely the grave of two unknown soldiers, which they have been guarding for over 30 years. And suddenly the managers of their district decide to turn the grave into a memorial.

The basis of the film story is the creation of a talented football team by a coach, its participation in a qualifying match, and preparation for the World Cup.

A lonely journalist in some West European country has a vision about the princess of his city who lived in XII century.

One day in the life of a young man named Nikita on his birthday. He is turning twenty-five. At night, Nikita dreams about his childhood, his father, his brother, and his grandmother's gift—a figurine of a goat glowing green. In the morning, it's the usual whirlwind of life, with prostitutes, conversations about eating beets, the dangers of radiation, and various esoteric theories.

On the eve of the New Year, several children write a letter to Father Frost asking him to send them a Christmas tree for the holiday, and then they make a Snowman who should take the letter to the magic forest. When midnight arrives, under the beat of a clock, the Snowman comes to life and, together with a small yard puppy, nicknamed Druzhok, sets off in search of Father Frost. (Note: Released in the United States as Spunky the Snowman in a shortened version of approximately 8 minutes.)

Portrait of the acclaimed Latvian composer Imants Kalniņš.

The first postwar years. The Director of a small breeding station Avdotya Pavlovna is not immediately convinced of the anti-science of the official Lysenkov direction in biology. But making sure leaving the farm as an ordinary agriculturist, where he works on breeding new wheat varieties on the basis of the persecuted Lysenkova chromosome theory of heredity.

About an old Cossack Gavril, who saved a Red Army soldier and loved him like a son.

A beautiful and touching story based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Steadfast Tin Soldier". A tin soldier without a leg sees a beautiful paper ballerina and falls in love. While trying to reach her, he falls from the window and has to overcome countless obstacles to see her again.

A third movie about Fyodor and his friends from the Prostokvashino village and their adventures - this time during the winter.

The fabulous journalist Murzilka, while on vacation, receives a telegram from the magazine's editor-in-chief in which Murzilka is instructed to make a photo portrait of a good boy or child inventor for the cover of the new issue.

An ethnographic analysis of the small Caucasian Khevurian tribe in Georgia.

Sasha Larionov, is in the eighth grade and still doesn't know that his mother has left the family. Sasha's father, a decent and very honest person, was used to telling people only the truth. But here he doesn't now how to tell his son that the mother left them for another man and therefore explains her long absence from a long business trip. However, soon Sasha finds out the truth and decides to go after his mom, hoping to get her back

In 1932, thousands of Komsomol members set off for the Far East to build the "city of youth" — Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Among the builders is a saboteur. Soon, fuel depots explode at the new factories in Komsomolsk.

Gena the Crocodile and Cheburashka decide to go to the sea on vacation. Shapoklyak steals their train tickets, so they are kicked off the train. On their way home, the duo, with Shapoklyak's help, stops hikers from poaching and a factory from polluting a river.

The enterprising head physician rents out places in the resort hospital to quite healthy vacationers. Fearing inspections, he keeps his “imaginary patients” under the strictest regime, prohibiting them from even going to the bathroom. So, a young teacher and a pensioner meet, who were coming here to bask in the sun and swim in the sea...

In the first days of the Second World War, a young woman with three children is evacuated from the front-line zone to the Urals. After some time, she receives a funeral for her husband. But she has her little sons with her. The eldest son Kolya becomes a reliable assistant to his mother.

Vetlugin, a worker at a Ural factory, becomes a member of the Moscow soccer team "Turbina". The captain and center forward Vitaly Grinko, known to the whole country, is jealous of the newcomer and tries to defame the simple-minded player. The whole team takes the side of the newcomer, criticizes the captain's behavior, and wins in the game with a foreign team.

Man who talks with a ghost called Black Monk is forced to see a doctor. After the treatment, he loses his ability to communicate with the ghost, becoming angry, violent and utterly unhappy.

Three evil wizards from a gloomy enchanted forest littered with broken toys and school supplies enter the city through a secret door in the fence to find three lazy children who "waste time." Having found such lazy people - a schoolboy and a schoolgirl, sorcerers deceive them by deceiving them of the time that they thoughtlessly lost by skipping school. As a result, old people turn into big children, and children into little grandparents.

The film delves into the moral dilemmas of human relationships. An old sailor, the sole survivor of a ship that sank during the war, grapples with the weight of a moral compromise made many years ago. As he reflects on his past, he recalls his carefree life, filled with mistakes, and the crime he committed against the captain of the lost ship.

Georg Lurich was a world-famous Estonian professional wrestler in the early 1900-s who became a legend already in his lifetime. He was called not only the world's best technique-wrestler but he was also a sports-philosopher, health and temperance activist, an efficient sports manager, a talent in acting, writing and chess, a "world's citizen" who spoke more than ten languages and an athlete with enormous popularity. At least 14 wrestling clubs in Europe and USA carried his name. This film is an unpretentious attempt to recall that unique man, the first world-famous Estonian.

A drama about a life of two sisters - Nadya and Lida, who both are dreaming about theater and actress career.

Batmanova, once a serf, sets Paris aflame with her singing and now returns to the court of the Prince in 19th-century Russia. The Prince wants Batmanova for himself, but she loves a young nobleman who is technically still a serf because his papers have been lost.

Journalist arrives in Odessa and falls into the hands of scammers who skillfully rob him. The situations are sometimes comical and sometimes absurd, but such is life...

A small construction team led by Potapov suddenly refuses to receive a bonus payment from their company for exceeding performance targets. The team accuses its construction company HQ with artificially reducing the targets, so they can be easily exceeded. It makes the management looks good, yet leads to frequent downtime reducing earnings for common construction workers even with fake bonuses. On a hastily organized meeting the management tries to subdue the "unruly" gang leader charging that he cannot know all details. It turned out that Potapov and his team prepared a detailed business analysis, which proved their point. Managers, who had different interests and positions, have to decide how to deal with the real problem leading to unexpected results.

Two Moscow investigators, investigating the corruption case, become a serious obstacle for the southern mafia. Trying to interfere with the investigators, the criminals go to any lengths - from the murder of dangerous witnesses to the intervention in the investigation of Leonid Brezhnev.

Pavel's mother hates his fiancee. When Pavel serves in the Army she writes him that Nastya is no longer faithful to him. Pavel decides not to return to his native town. But many years later he returns to his fathers funeral and finds out that Nastya died sometime ago. She left three kids orphans and her elder daughter is also a daughter of Pavel.

The film is set during World War II. After capturing the "trophy" Mercedes, a group of scouts, disguised as German officers commits a daring raid behind enemy lines (the 116th Motorized Division) on roads controlled by the enemy.

Three novellas based on M. Sholokhov's early stories about the first years of the formation of Soviet power on the Don. (1) “Koloverť”. Two Cossack brothers and their elderly father fight for the Bolsheviks, but when only Ignat and his father return to their White-held stanitsa, their third brother betrays them, sealing their fate by handing them over for execution. (2) “Chervotočina”. Idealistic Stepan joins the Komsomol against his wealthy Cossack family’s wishes, but when two oxen he lends to a poor neighbor vanish, his enraged father and brother beat both Stepan and the neighbor to death. (3) “Prodkomissar”. Commissar Ignat Bodiagin is charged with requisitioning grain for the Red Army, only to find his own father condemned for hoarding; he must preside over his execution and soon dies himself leading the resisting Cossacks away from the grain convoy.

A tale based on a classic novel by Alexander Pushkin.

Film version of the Rimsky Korsakov opera from the Pushkin story. Motsart i Salyeri (Mozart and Salieri), based on a legend that Salieri poisoned Mozart, meditates on the nature of creativity while introducing, in brilliantly compressed speeches, what was to be one of the important Russian themes—metaphysical rebellion against God.

This exhilarating two-part film (“Soldier Ivan Brovkin” and “Ivan Brovkin on the State Farm”) presented to the country a new national hero – kind, modest, charming and… ne’er-do-well. That “ne’er-do-well-ness” proved “Kharitonov’s special key to audiences’ hearts”. Following Brovkin’s appearance on the screen, Kharitonov had become a star of the national cinema, an idol for millions of people. His incredible popularity may be compared to that of another national hero – the world’s first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. And not surprisingly, it was Kharitonov who made a cameo appearance going up the festival stairs and followed with the adoring eyes of the heroines in V. Menshov’s Oscar-winning melodrama “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”.

In "Dead Souls" Gogol posed the most pressing and painful questions of modern life. The very title of the poem had enormous revealing power; it carried, according to Herzen, “something terrifying”, “he could not name it otherwise; not the revisionists - dead souls, but all these Nozdryovs. Manilovs and all those like them are dead souls, and we meet them at every step..."

Two young directors adapted the short stories of two Russian authors whose works had been banned for decades, and so their film ended up in the censor’s vault as well – for twenty years. Both tales look back to the post-revolutionary era: 'Angel' (Olesha) speaks tragically of the brutality and destruction of the time, and 'The Homeland of Electricity' (Platonov) captures its haunting grotesquery.

Maria Odintsova, a young engineer, is a leader, secretary of the district committee of a small district, which is beginning to acquire important economic significance: it is decided to build a large hydroelectric power plant here. The heroine's conflict with the head of construction arises because of their different attitudes to the possibilities of using and preserving natural resources.

A young man comes to work to kolkhoz where no one knows that he has no experience whatsoever.

The second of the Soviet Winnie-the-Pooh series. This one had Pooh and Piglet visiting Rabbit for a meal with honey.

In the forest a holiday — the deer Bambi was born, the son of the leader, the prince, the heir to the crown. Bambi is still small, and the whole huge world around him appears like a fairy tale. In this tale, he meets many miracles: animals and trees, the sun and the river, his second cousins ​​and sister, squirrel, funny hares and beautiful swans. But in the fairy forest, where everyone lives together, there is He... The one whose name is not called. Whom everyone is afraid of, even the most powerful animals. Bambi will face a series of dangers, adventures and new knowledge, before he grows up and rightfully takes the place of an unnamed father - he will become the leader of his pack.

A man, a local hooligan and alcoholic, is killed in a gloomy St. Petersburg communal apartment. Each of the residents hated him in their own way, and each had their own motive for the crime. But everyone has an ironclad alibi. A local disabled person undertakes to help the investigator...

An expedition group led by Professor Shestakov arrives in one of the regions of Siberia to search for diamonds. The research begins with a dramatic event: The expedition leader dies suddenly. However, the geologists decide to continue the difficult, dangerous hike along the taiga "diamond trail".

Ertaoz travels to the city with the intent to sell a chicken and pay off his father's debts. Upon arrival, he falls for the beautiful Margalita and decides to help her dispose of her ex-lover's body. However, at the cemetery, the lover–a policeman–unexpectedly regains consciousness and arrests Ertaoz and the chicken. Ertaoz is sentenced to ten years, while the bird receives seven. In prison, they meet an inventor who has built a flying machine that runs not on fuel but the power of love.

When a young man wants to marry a poor girl, her cousin envies her very much. She even makes everybody believe that the main character was in love with her. He escapes from many difficulties in order to find his beloved who also became trapped in a luxurious villa with some strange relatives. The people inside villa are vampires, they were called upyri in those days in Russia. They suck blood of anyone who comes to see them. The young man too much in love so he looses his head and goes directly to the nest of vampires.

After his father's death, teenager Viktor Tsaplin was sent by his stepmother, who suspected the boy of stealing watches, to an Odessa orphanage. The guys met the new guy unfriendly, and when the teacher's antique watch was missing, Victor was considered the culprit. After enrolling in a nautical school and once going to sea with tipsy fishermen, Victor crashes a boat. He is being expelled from the college. Deciding to start a new life and in a new place, Victor leaves to work as a fireman in Kamchatka.

Members of the Shield and Helmet Masonic Lodge, sent by the CIA, are preparing a coup in one of the western countries. The criminal chronicle reporter manages to infiltrate the headquarters of the conspirators. The information he produces will play a decisive role in preventing the putsch. However, the successful journalist soon became convinced that he had discovered only the tip of the iceberg...

A new doctor from Moscow arrives at a provincial mental institution. His interest is the peculiarities of the psyche of a patient who believes that he is Yakov Yurovsky, the man who assassinated the last Russian tsar. In the course of their conversations it transpires that the patient is a kind of philosopher, not without a gift for suggestion. In a while the doctor himself falls under his patient’s influence: he tends to relive that fatal night of June 16-17, 1918 when, without any investigation or trial, Tsar Nicholas II, who had recently abdicated, was murdered, together with his wife, daughters and incurably ill heir. Soon the doctor realizes that the tragedy of the last Russian tsar is in part his own tragedy, too...

Having failed to enter the institute, Sergei got a job in a workshop to refill lighters. Giving all his free time to his new hobby - boxing, the hero in a short period of time achieves significant success and insists that the coach allowed him to the nearest competition. Having received a well-founded refusal, Sergei goes to another club and wins a victory over a famous boxer at a tournament. But the accidental victory does not bring him joy.

A young ordinary communist, Vasiliy Gubanov, was among many who took part in the construction of the most important facility for the young republic, the power plant. He did his job in a way that was beyond human ability. He could love, too, with a passion and a passion for self, but his life was cut short very early.