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Russian
see all genres ›Alert to film's value as both art and propaganda from early on, the Soviet Union oversaw one of the great cinematic industries in the world during the silent era, turning out narrative and documentary features influential around the world. The Stalinist era's derogatory effect on expression eroded that stature until a new wave of talent proclaimed itself during a Cold War "thaw" from the late 1950s onward. Today's Russian filmmakers mix older high-art traditions with brashly commercial new ones.
Discover Russian Films
Genres / International / Eurasian / Russian
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Alexandra
In a desolate, sun-scorched corner of the world, an elderly woman has come to see her beloved grandson, a young officer stationed at a remote military outpost. With the enemy just beyond the compound, she wanders the barracks, observing the routines of military life before making a sudden trip into the outlying countryside....Start your free trial to watch
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Antisex
This is not a boring story about sexual dysfunction, or a cool erotic movie. This is the funniest fairy tale about love! It's a love story between an ordinary man and a not so ordinary woman and she's not sexless, she's just asexual. It is ASEXUALITY! It's just a movement and you probably heard about it before, but never like...Start your free trial to watch
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Attention! Wolves!
With shades of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER, this unusual Soviet animation blends symbolic allegory and documentary photographs to warn against the persistent threat of fascism. A feral boy is found in the woods the same day that the Nuremberg Trials’ death sentences are carried out....Start your free trial to watch
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Ave Maria
Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s condemnation of the American war in Vietnam trades in some of the crude images one associates with Soviet propaganda: a soldier gunning down a child; clamoring capitalists superimposed over the killing fields. And yet its animation style is surprisingly subtle and its tone more elegiac than one might...Start your free trial to watch
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Battleship Potemkin
For eight decades, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 masterpiece has remained one of the most influential silent films of all time. Yet each successive generation has seen BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN subjected to censorship and recutting, its unforgettable power diluted in unauthorized public domain editions from dubious...Start your free trial to watch
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Beat the Fascist Pirates
This animated "political poster" grants "no mercy for Hitler's bloodthirsty sharks," which are depicted prowling international waters to sneakily "bite" Allied ships from beneath. Calling for patriots to “"Smash the fascist rats relentlessly! In the air, on land and at sea," it's a striking piece of...Start your free trial to watch
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Black and White
This early effort by master Soviet animators Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Leonid Amalrik offers a devastating and concise picture of racism in America. The film’s moral outrage is inseparable from its graphic precision. BLACK AND WHITE makes especially forceful use of symbols: the minister’s cross and foreman’s whip are pictured as...Start your free trial to watch
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By the Law
BY THE LAW breaks down into several stylistically different parts, only one of which resembles the grotesque extravaganza of MR. WEST. Gone is Kuleshov's insistence on the straight-forward, plot-advancing shot. Gone is the idea of montage as a step-by-step elaboration of some process. Rather, the opening sequence slowly...Start your free trial to watch
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The Cameraman's Revenge
After filming several live-action documentaries for the Natural History Museum in Kono, Lithuania, Ladislas Starewicz started a film about fighting stag beetles but was frustrated when the insects refused to perform under lights. Starewicz decided to recreate the fight by articulating dead beetles in...Start your free trial to watch
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China in Flames
CHINA IN FLAMES rallies popular support for the Soviet Union’s alliance with China using an eclectic array of animation techniques and rhetorical strategies. Bold cut-out caricatures of greedy imperialists give way to an allegorical story about rice farmers done in the style of Chinese watercolors. A heroic depiction of a...Start your free trial to watch
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The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom
Exploding the myth that the Soviet silent cinema was limited to political propaganda, Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky’s THE CIGARETTE GIRL OF MOSSELPROM is a playful romantic comedy set on the streets of 1924 Moscow, occasionally peeking behind the scenes of the Mezhrabpom-Rus Studios. Yuliya Solntseva stars as a...Start your free trial to watch
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Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Filmmaker Michal Leszcylowski was editor for Andrei Tarkovsky's last film, THE SACRIFICE. During the time they spent together, their relationship grew into an enduring friendship. DIRECTED BY ANDREI TARKOVSKY is an homage, a fluid and captivating documentary that presents the brooding as well as the more...Start your free trial to watch
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Durakovo: Village of Fools
Durakovo, the ironically named Village of Fools, is a secluded town 90 miles outside Moscow whose leader brews old ideals in hopes of a revitalized regime. Mikhail Morozov rules this small community with concepts of God, Tsar and Fatherland. Happiness only comes from God, the Tsar does God's bidding and...Start your free trial to watch
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Earth
Alexander Dovzhenko was among the greatest of Soviet directors and his EARTH is one of the undisputed masterpieces of the cinema (though his earlier ZVENIGORA is arguably a more revolutionary work). No single viewing of EARTH will ever reveal all of its poetic brilliance. In its compelling story, an old farmer dies and his...Start your free trial to watch
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The End of St. Petersburg
In 1927, Eisenstein and Pudovkin were both assigned to make films commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution. The results, OCTOBER and THE END OF ST. PETERSBURG, are two of the unforgettable masterpieces of epic filmmaking. Pudovkin's film, the more intensely dramatic and personal of the...Start your free trial to watch
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The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
MR. WEST was the first feature film that Lev Kuleshov made with a team of actors who had attended his Experimental Cinema Laboratory. What he was aiming for was the aesthetics of American action films. He admired them for their fast pace, well-wrought suspense and athletic performances, as well as...Start your free trial to watch