Directed by Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze • 1988 • Georgia/USSR

The exquisite final feature from Sergei Parajanov, Ashik Kerib is an intoxicating homage to the folk legends of Azerbaijan. Based on the writings of Parajanov’s beloved Mikhail Lermontov, the film relates the adventures of the...

Directed by Wojciech Has • 1965 • Poland

Wojciech Has’s masterpiece of sixties counterculture is a surreal odyssey across time and space. Adapted from Jan Potocki’s picaresque novel, the film stars Polish screen icon Zbigniew Cybulski as Alphonse van Worden, an 18th-century military officer whos...

Directed by Grigori Kromanov • 1979 • USSR/Estonia

An eerie guesthouse high in the hills in some unnamed European country is the setting for this Soviet sci-fi/horror oddity from Estonian director Grigori Kromanov – although the film was in fact shot in the mountains of distant Kazakhstan. Like ...

Directed by Zoltán Fábri • 1971 • Hungary

Zoltán Fábri’s wickedly allegorical “nunsploitation” classic is a coming-of-age tale, an anticlerical satire, and a political parable wrapped up into one. Adapted from Margit Kaffka’s 1917 novel of the same name, Ants’ Nest is set in convent where the im...

Directed by Juris Podnieks • 1986 • USSR/Latvia

Hailed as “the first bird of perestroika” by Mikhail Gorbachev, Juris Podnieks’ cult classic documentary is a vital document of a society on the brink of change. Podnieks shoots with compassion and anger, giving voice to a generation coming of age ...

Directed by Kira Muratova • 1978 • USSR/Russia

On a rough and tumble construction site, the conversation flows and love blooms for trio Lyuba, Misha, and Kolya. In the liminal space of their workplace, they build material and intangible connections. Kira Muratova’s signature eye for the foibles ...

Directed by Lana Gogoberidze • 1978 • USSR/Georgia

A pioneering work of feminist filmmaking from the legendary Lana Gogoberidze, Some Interviews on Personal Matters is one of the most vital films produced in Soviet Georgia. The iconic Sofiko Chiaureli (The Colour of Pomegranates) stars as a jour...

Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1967 • Armenia/USSR

After completing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and before embarking on The Colour of Pomegranates, the great Sergei Parajanov produced this exquisite miniature about the work of Hakob Hovnatanyan, a nineteenth-century Armenian portraitist rever...

Directed by Vytautas Žalakevičius • 1965 • USSR/Lithuania

1947, the Lithuanian countryside. The village Soviet chairman Lokys has been murdered by the “Forest Brothers”: nationalist guerillas bitterly opposed to the new communist regime. Lokys’s four sons return to the village seeking vengeance,...

Directed by Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze • 1985 • USSR/Georgia

Marking Sergei Parajanov’s return to filmmaking after 15 years of imprisonment and censorship, The Legend of Suram Fortress is a dazzling reimagining of Georgian national legend. Unfolding across two mirrored storylines, one i...

Directed by Algirdas Dausa and Almantas Grikevičius • 1968 • USSR/Lithuania

Banned by the Soviet authorities outside of Lithuania, this controversial classic blends the personal and the political against stunning coastal landscapes. 1944, on the Curonian Spit: one side of this Baltic lagoon is o...

Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1968 • Hungary

Inspired by Carpathian folklore and based on the epic poem by Ferenc Juhász, this mesmerising animated short by the great Sándor Reisenbüchler imagines a world destroyed and then rebuilt. A fearsome, seven-headed dragon swallows the sun and moon,...

Directed by Kaljo Kiisk • 1969 • USSR/Estonia

Hailed as Estonia’s first truly modern feature film, Kaljo Kiisk’s mind-bending satire of authoritarianism and self-delusion pushed the boundaries of Soviet propriety and was banned from theatres for nearly twenty years. In an unnamed, occupied count...

Directed by Dušan Makavejev • 1964 • Yugoslavia
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The debut feature from Yugoslav cinema’s greatest iconoclast, Man Is Not a Bird announced Dušan Makavejev to the world and paved the way for the Balkan nation’s Black Wave movement. Se...

Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1978 • Hungary

One of Sándor Reisenbüchler’s most playful and politically pointed shorts, Panic weds his familiar dazzling colour palette and engagingly naive visual style to a parable about the dangers of unchecked technology. An advanced civilisation takes th...

Directed by Ester Krumbachová • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
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Ester Krumbachová was the hidden mastermind behind the Czech New Wave, contributing costumes, set design, and screenplays for some of the most celebrated films of the era. This n...

Directed by Uldis Brauns • 1967 • USSR/Latvia

A landmark in the Baltic poetic documentary tradition, 235 000 000 is one of the most ambitious films of the Soviet 60s. Produced in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution – the title refers to the nominal population of the...

Directed by Aktan Abdykalykov • 1998 • Kyrgyzstan

This award-winning film proved to be a catalyst for Kyrgyz cinema’s post-Soviet development. The second part of an autobiographical series based on director Aktan Abdykalykov’s own life, Beshkempir tells a tale of tumultuous adolescence. The pro...

Directed by Emir Kusturica • 1998 • Serbia

A careening ensemble comedy bursting at the seams with music and visual energy, Black Cat, White Cat is Emir Kusturica’s madcap tribute to the marginalised and dispossessed. The film follows the twisted romances and small-time schemes of a community of ...

Directed by Volodymyr Denysenko • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine

Volodymyr Denysenko’s searing partisan drama is a neglected masterpiece of Soviet Ukrainian cinema. Recounting a partisan attack on a Nazi officer and the brutal recriminations that follow, Vasyl Zemliak’s quasi-autobiographical script draws ...

Directed by Laila Pakalniņa • 2015 • Latvia

At once an homage to and a subversive reimagining of Soviet cinematic heritage, Laila Pakalniņa’s Dawn is one of post-independence Latvia’s most crucial films. Pakalniņa draws on the Stalinist propaganda myth of Pavlik Morozov: an ardent Pioneer who wa...

Directed by Eldar Shengelaia • 1973 • USSR/Georgia

Shengelaia’s most surreal feature, the suitably-titled Eccentrics spins the tall tale of Ertaoz (Demno Jgenti), an orphan who goes to jail for the sake of his lover. There he encounters renegade prisoner and latter-day Da Vinci, Qristopore (Vasi...

Directed by Andrzej Munk • 1958 • Poland

One of only three feature films completed by Andrzej Munk before his tragic early death in a car accident, Eroica is a scathing assault on the false pieties of national pride and a key film in the history of the Polish School. The film is structured as tw...