Discoveries from Soviet Union World Cinema

A story about a group of children and their life set at the small Russian seashore town in the year of 1913.

Drama of the life of a peasant family, who came to work in the fisheries of Astrakhan. The film is set in the late XIX - early XX centuries.

In an ordinary Soviet apartment, where an ordinary Soviet family lives, suddenly ... the donkey breaks in. All attempts to expel the animal end in vain. Neither the police, nor the veterinary service, nor even the local hooligan can help. And only the ubiquitous film-goers, who needed an animal for filming a movie, manage to put the donkey out of the apartment.

The cartoon consists of several mini-cartoons: "Liar" based on a poem by D. Kharms, about a boy who fantasized a lot and passed everything off as the truth, but no one believed him. "The Key" is based on a poem by O. Grigoriev, about an old grandmother who left a key at home, but her granddaughter did not open the door for her. "The Ball" is about a boy who dreamed of becoming a football player and therefore could not part with the ball.

A priest engages in a scam claiming a water burst is holy.

The war was over. Like many of her female friends, Sasha Potapova was left a widow. It was hard living without a man’s shoulder to lean on, without love and affection, yet no one had ever seen her crying or despairing. For her strong character, the fellow-villagers elected her a collective farm chairwoman. The work, with its cares and worries, helped all but forget about her personal misfortune and woman’s loneliness. And then she fell in love – a bittersweet, unshared love, but happy anyway…

The heroes of the film are students of a pedagogical university, those who, after a year or two, have to carry knowledge to schoolchildren, "to sow the rational, good, eternal." In the meantime, student practice. True, the practice is not quite ordinary, because for the first time students leave far from the walls of their own university, for the first time they meet with students in the classroom not in the presence of their teachers, those with whom life encounters them daily at the institute, but with those who have been working for more than a year at school.

Peer Gynt grew up a handsome guy, girls peered at him, and he dreamed of becoming a king and getting rich. He went to the wedding and there he saw the girl Solveig. Peer got drunk, quarreled with the guests and went into the mountains, where he met a troll maiden. Peer wanted to marry her and become a king, but the troll king explained that for this you need to become a troll and live according to their customs. Peer managed to escape, and he sailed on the ship. For many years he swam and accumulated wealth. And when he returned to his native coast in a storm, the ship sank with all the load.

The film is a reflection on the responsibility of man to other people, native nature and the world around us, the problem of preserving Lake Baikal, on the banks of which a large construction project has unfolded. The first half of the 60s of the XX century, the story of the love of young Lena Barmina to an adult respectable person, bearing on his shoulders a heavy burden of responsibility for the activities of a huge enterprise. Construction engineer Chernykh and Lena, the daughter of a scientist, are doing everything to save the lake from harmful and unjustified plums. A difficult relationship develops between them and soon Lena realizes that she is in love. But after learning that Chernykh is married, the girl leaves...

A film student shoots an étude on an elderly couple who meet late in life. You know how it goes: here they are in the rain, here they are on a swing, here they are dancing—something like love, or whatever that is.

A young man named Nikolai Loshkarev, a student at a river college, is undergoing his first real-life experience—he finds a job he loves and sets off on his first voyage...

A story about children showing Father Frost butterflies, green grass, in short, Summer.

Propaganda film enhancing the role of Joseph Stalin in the defense of the city of Tsaritsyn (subsequently Stalingrad, at present Volgograd) by the red army during the Russian civil war.

Misfortune brings Anatoly, a lonely sailor, to meet Claudia, who comes to his house to help bury his mother. Although he sees her as a calculating person at first, he soon begins to realize he is deeply mistaken.

France, XV century. The young Scot, striving to make his worthy efforts, is kindly treated by the king and admitted to the guard. Soon the king entrusts him with a difficult mission - however, the matter turns into an insidious deception. Saving his beloved, the shooter of the guard shows miracles of courage and nobility ...

After serving in the army, Lyonka Parasochka got a driver in the fleet, deciding to continue his father's tradition. His mentor was Pyotr Demyanovich Volovich, who knew how to make money by "left trips" and various "operations". Lyonka saw that Volovich lived widely, beyond his means, but at first he somehow did not think about the sources of wealth. Apparently because he was in love with Volovich's daughter Lyusya.

A funny comedy about doctor Aybolit and his assistants and patients - all animals.

A propaganda film about the fate of a peasant son Kostya.

By chance the main character of the picture becomes invisible. This curiosity causes a chain of eccentric events that allow the authors to ridicule in a grotesque form such enduring vices as bureaucratism, swagger, careerism and familialism. Based on satirical works by I. Ilf and E. Petrov.

Paunvere parish school students Arno and Teele, Toots and Kiir, Tõnisson and Imelik experience feelings during one school winter, the traces of which they carry throughout their future lives - from true friendship and first love to self-discovery and clarifying life goals.

A Soviet claymation short film created by Garri Bardin in 1990 that retells the story of Red Riding Hood while incorporating political metaphors and themes about the USSR's demise; the wolf representing communism, devouring innocent creatures who have never known him.

One day, the Cuckoo left the clock and temporarily flew away to the forest on business. Her neighbors are different animals, and they decided to help her, replace her. But nothing good came of it. Based on the fairy tale by Sofia Prokofieva.

The story of six-year-old Bobka, a kind and cheerful man who lives in Leningrad and desperately dreams of unexpectedly visiting his dad, who serves in the distant Caucasus Mountains. This is his most cherished dream, and it will certainly come true, but only after some adventures that are quite normal for this tomboy.

The action takes place in the 1930s and 1940s in Chukotka. With the establishment of Soviet power, changes are coming to the camp. The main character — hunter Poygin — does not realize the significance of what is happening immediately. There is a series of events: a collision with a Black shaman who tried to take away a beloved woman from a hunter, a meeting with the head of the cultural base Medvedev, etc. Poygin observes the events that ultimately determine his life position. He becomes chairman of the first collective farm in Chukotka.

The story is about how a metropolitan writer, concerned about the “fifth point of his questionnaire,” instead of the noble or, at worst, rabbit fur assigned to him by rank, was given a “medium fluffy domestic cat” at the Literary Fund, and how he, previously quiet and inconspicuous, ventured to a “mutiny on a ship” confidently cutting through the waters of “socialist realism.”

Historical drama about the engineer of the first printing press built in Muscovite Rus' and his complicated relationship with the state under the rule of tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible"). Released for theaters as a 2-part 147 minute movie and for TV as a 5-part 5-hour miniseries.

The misadventures of a cheerful inventor begin when he crashes his motorcycle into a long pipe being carried by workers.

A fantasy film on the theme of the early works of Nikolai Gogol, tightly interwoven with his personality and biography.

A retired KGB colonel, having collected at his country house a file cabinet of people who had cooperated with the Committee in previous years, calls them back to his house and makes them perform certain tasks. But even on it there are bigger sharks - representatives of the mafia, who have guessed how much money they can now get from the former "peasants". However, one of them, dreaming to finish with the archive, will somewhat disrupt the plans of the above-mentioned characters.

A cartoon version of the voyage of the Argonauts (Greek Mythology) with the aim of getting the Gold Fleece.

Military doctor Vladimir Ustimenko is a man of duty and honor, committed to the cause he serves, and one single love that he carries through his whole life: Varvara Stepanova is a whimsical girl who dreamed of becoming a great actress but eventually became a geologist. The war will cruelly interfere in the fate of the heroes and confuse their relationship even more.

Poetic tale of love between of the hunter Gilgil and his beautiful wife Tintin, told through the Chukchi myth imagery.

Talented cabbie with aspirations as a singer spends afterhours practicing with an amateur opera company, ignoring his sweetheart, the femme cab dispatcher.

The story how he will never see her and she will never forget him.

Saveliy Govorkov, an Afghanistan war veteran tries to fight mafia in his own town.

On April 1944, Joseph Stalin orders the Red Army to liberate the Crimea from the German occupiers. The Wehrmacht's local commanders beg Hitler to allow them to retreat from the vulnerable position, but he refuses. After a fierce battle, the Soviet forces destroy the German and Romanian units defending the peninsula and retake Sevastopol.

The events of the film take place in the first days of May 1966. Nikolai Kuznetsov, a distinguished veteran of the Great Patriotic War and former camp guard, accidentally meets one of his former prisoners. This encounter leads to new meetings—and new insights into the years that have passed...

Eight-year-old Kirill has big problems: he struggles at school, his parents are boring, and he has nowhere to put his lame stray dog. In short, he is at odds with the whole world. Then he meets journalist Vadim, who is easy to get along with and interesting. Vadim's interest is genuine — after all, Kirill is named after his deceased friend.

A play about the life and death of Jean-Baptiste Molière, an artist tired of fighting the world.

Supply clerk Chuvilikhin goes to Moscow to fulfill his coworkers' errands. In the hustle and bustle of the capital, he loses the list where the name of the sheet music to be bought for the director's wife was written down. Anatoly Stepanovich rushes around the city trying to remember the melody.

Having fled from the Crimea, Wrangel, having concentrated his army on the Bulgarian coast, is preparing a landing force and counts only on the support of the counter-revolutionary underground hiding in Rostov. Captain Filatov falls into the hands of the Red Army soldiers, who is "arranged" to escape with the help of Chekist Bakharev. Filatov, together with his "savior", finds himself at the center of a secret organization preparing a senseless rebellion.

Institute of Culture graduate, a young film director Konstantin Sirotkin, arrives in the village Sosnovka and in the local country club he is trying to put the Schiller's drama "Intrigue and Love". This young director’s work has identified villagers’ talents, their genuine love for the arts and discovered their spiritual beauty.

This film ballad is dedicated to those who never returned home from WW2. A group of retreating Soviet soldiers, crossing a lunar terrain in a desperate attempt to escape death, is attacked by a German fighter plane that appears like a bolt from the blue. One by one they are killed. Then suddenly, in an unlikely denouement bordering on the mystical, the attacker is shot down with a simple rifle. For ideological reasons that defy understanding this film, one of Viktor Hres’ earliest works, was shelved in 1967 by Soviet censors. In 2010, it was restored by the Debut Studio of the Oleksander Dovzhenko Film Studio with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine.

Young Soviet farm workers are treated to a weekend in Moscow visiting the Bolshoi theater, in gratitude for which they invite the artists who've befriended them to visit their farm and be entertained by performances of their own.

The story is about a brave boy who never takes off his hat.

Once there lived a very hardworking donkey. Everyone loved him, including the girl whom he drove to school. But one day in the house appeared a truck who carried out all his work. The donkey felt like no one needed him and fell ill with sadness.

In the wealthy noble family of Popelsky, the only son Petrik is blind from birth. His mother Anna Mikhailovna, infinitely loving and pitying the boy, educates him as a rare fragile flower. And only Uncle Maxim, who fought under the banner of Garibaldi in his youth, is trying to accustom the boy to independence. The boy begins to recognize the world by touch, and one day his fingers find the keys of a piano. But, still not knowing the price of his talent, he leaves with the tramps "to seek the truth." And now only love can reconcile him with the world of the sighted.

An abstract color celebration of Soviet perseverance under fire (the literal firepower of foreign and capitalist warmongers), this lyrical animated short aims to capture Mother Russia's essence like lightning in a bottle. There's a spaghetti western vibe at times to the striking silhouette imagery here. Florid patriotic folk songs on the soundtrack are often depicted line-for-line in the gorgeous animation. - Dennis Harvey

Rookie Alexey Gavrilov ends up in a unit where hazing reigns. He resists as much as he can to the three "grandfathers" who, on the eve of demobilization, decide to recoup as much as possible on the "turtles" for past humiliations. He soon finds a like-minded person. Unable to break the will of the obstinate, the "grandfathers" carry out a vile provocation, and then Alexei decides to take a desperate step.

Based on the novel of the same name by V. Kozhevnikov. The film is about the heroism of Soviet workers, clearly manifested during the WWII.

Merry Fellows was the first Soviet musical comedy. Set in Odessa and Moscow in the 1930s. Shepherd Kostya Potekhin is mistaken for an international concert star. He falls in love with Anyuta and plays the "star" for her. In a cascade of comic musical numbers he becomes the leader of a Jazz-Band and gives a hilarious show at the Odessa Music Hall. Now he is destined to perform at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

Chicherin - Russian revolutionary, Soviet diplomat, first People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR and the USSR. Member of the USSR Central Executive Committee of 1-5 convocations, member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party. Musicologist, author of a book about Mozart. In memory of Chicherin.

The story is about a woman, who has to heat up the company's sauna, because the bosses want to entertain foreign visitors. The sauna is situated in a small village where her ex-husband is from, and an old aunt of his is still living. In addition to having to face her bosses she also has to face her past.

A green crocodile who loves flowers and leaves falls in love with a pretty cow.

The secret police agent finds that factory director wife is counterrevolutionary but dies from the heart attack. The director reads the diary of an agent and turns his wife to police.

WWII, 1945. There are fights for the city on the Danube. The river is mined by the Germans, and this fetters the action of our troops. In addition, a city with a million people was left without food. And downstream are Soviet food barges. The command instructs the reconnaissance group a difficult and dangerous operation — to obtain from the enemy a map of the mined sections of the river, which requires penetrating into the city captured by the Germans.

Nadezhda Kazakova, a Siberian girl, comes to a seaside southern town for a youth song festival. But at the first rehearsal with the orchestra Nadya fails, after which she leaves for the construction of a hydroelectric power plant. There, in a working club, success, inspiration, hope and unrequited love come to her.