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.
Watch Russian Films
Genres / International / Eurasian / Russian
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Elena
Winner of Cannes' Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize, ELENA is a gripping, modern twist on the classic noir thriller. Sixty-ish spouses Vladimir and Elena uneasily share his palatial Moscow apartment (he's a still-virile, wealthy businessman; she's his dowdy former nurse who has clearly...Watch Movie
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The Rape of Europa
THE RAPE OF EUROPA is an epic journey through seven countries, into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in...Watch Movie
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Silent Souls
One of the most acclaimed films of 2011, SILENT SOULS is a breathtakingly beautiful road-movie masterpiece. After the sudden death of his wife, tough guy Miron asks taciturn writer Aist to accompany him on a long journey to dispose of her remains according to the rituals of the Merya people (an...Watch Movie
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Pinhas
Pinhas and his mother are new immigrants from Russia. While his mother barely makes a living working night shifts, she devotes her spare time to the affair she has with a married man. On the third floor lives a religious family, and Pinhas is drawn to their warmth and unity. There he meets a girl...Watch Movie
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The Dry Valley
DRY VALLEY is the first full feature film by Alexandra Strelyanaya. The film is based on the famous novel written by Nobel Prize laureate Ivan Bunin. This story unites the destinies of the landowners and their servants, and is considered to be one of the most complete portraits of the Russian...Watch Movie
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The Edge
THE EDGE is a story of suppressed passion and destructive obsession set in a remote post WWII Siberian village, sparked by the arrival of Ignat, an emotionally and physically damaged Soviet tank commander with an obsession for steam engines. His self destructive streak causes increasing havoc...Watch Movie
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In Memoriam Alexander Litvinenko
Were it an episode in a lurid spy thriller, it would be dismissed as too fantastical: a dissident intelligence officer, a thorn in the side of a ruthless and unforgiving regime, dispatched in the most inventively terrifying of ways, by nuclear poisoning. Not only that, hotels,...Watch Movie
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Immortality, home and elsewhere
Weaving around a theory of immortality based on the premise that our lives are a summation of all the information we consume and process, gleaned from existing theories from a number of scientific disciplines, the film draws on the filmmaker's brush with a global nuclear...Watch Movie
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Wagner and Me
English actor and raconteur Stephen Fry explores his passion for history’s most controversial composer, Richard Wagner. Can he salvage Wagner’s music from its association with Hitler? Animated by Fry’s trademark wit and intelligence and set against the backdrop of Germany's annual Bayreuth...Watch Movie
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100 Days Before the Command
Five young Red Army recruits struggle for survival against the merciless violence that surrounds them on a daily basis. Their only means of saving their dignity is by preserving the humanity and compassion they share for each other. Visually astonishing and emotionally...Watch Movie
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Girl Model
Despite a lack of obvious similarities between Siberia and Tokyo, a thriving model industry connects these distant regions. GIRL MODEL follows two protagonists involved in this industry: Ashley, a deeply ambivalent model scout who scours the Siberian countryside looking for fresh faces to send to...Watch Movie
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To Live
Early autumn in the godforsaken Russian countryside. A local hunter Michail witnesses a skirmish in the middle of the forest - three men want to kill Andrey. Kind-hearted Michail helps Andrey escape and together they run from the villains who chase them. Thus, two totally different men start a...Watch Movie
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Captive
Two Russian soldiers, the seasoned and laconic Rubakhin and the cheerful and frivolous rifleman Vovka, walk over the mountains and through the gorges of Chechnya searching for a guide to lead their convoy out of an ambush. Only a local who knows the trails can do it, but the locals are enemies,...Watch Movie
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The Prodigy
Olga Smirnova's talent and drive are taking her to new heights in the ultra-competitive arena of world-class ballet at the Bolshoi in Moscow. This film shows what that extreme sacrifice looks like behind the curtain, through images and the words of Olga and her demanding, but sensitive coach, who...Watch Movie
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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...Watch Movie
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Whispering Pages
The pages that whisper through this brooding, beautiful tone poem are from nineteenth-century Russian literature, primarily Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and...Watch Movie
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Stone
If ever a film replicated the state of dreaming, STONE does. Which is not to say it is, in the classical sense, surreal; but it has the flow and fugitive feeling of a half-remembered reverie, full of mysteries, portents, inexplicable happenings, and chimerical objects. Set in (and filmed in the...Watch Movie
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The Art of Observing Life
In the wonderful ART OF OBSERVING LIFE, renowned documentarian Marina Goldovskaya provides a master class in Cinéma vérité and an appreciation of the filmmakers who transformed the Documentary. Filmed mostly in Goldovskaya’s home in Los Angeles over an extended period of time,...Watch Movie
