Directed by Aleksei German • 1976 • USSR/Russia

One of the few “cinéma-vérité” gems centred around Second World War, Aleksei German’s sophomore film is a melancholic yet deft investigation into the true wages of war. Disillusioned correspondent Lopatin is granted twenty days of leave from the St...

Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov • 1988 • USSR/Turkmenistan

In the dying days of the Soviet experiment, a young doctor finds himself posted to a remote Turkmen town. Attempting to research the relationship between religious faith and medicine, he finds his efforts confounded by a series of mysterio...

Directed by Agnieszka Holland • 2017 • Poland

Two of Poland’s cultural titans join forces as veteran auteur Agnieszka Holland adapts Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead into a propulsive eco-thriller. Agnieszka Mandat is magnetic as Duszejko, an animal ri...

Directed by Andrzej Wajda • 1962 • Yugoslavia

This rarely-screened gem, produced in Yugoslavia, is one of Andrzej Wajda’s more singular films. Adapting Nikolai Leskov’s nineteenth-century novella about adultery and murder, and incorporating Dmitry Shostakovich’s riveting opera on the same source...

Directed by Zoltán Fábri • 1956 • Hungary

Zoltán Fábri’s dizzying romance marked a turning point in post-war Hungarian cinema when it premiered at Cannes in 1956. Based on a novel by Imre Sarkadi, the film charts the travails of Mari (a star-making turn from Mari Törőcsik), a peasant girl betrot...

Directed by Wojciech Has • 1958 • Poland

Also known in English as Lidia Ate the Apple, Wojciech Has’s melancholic adaptation of Stanisław Dygat’s novel evokes the despair pervading Poland in the years before and after the Second World War. In 1939, bourgeois student Pawel (Tadeusz Janczar) rebel...

Directed by Dan Pița and Mircea Veroiu • 1972 • Romania

A long-overlooked cult classic of Romanian cinema set in the rolling mountains of Transylvania, The Stone Wedding is a folkloric film poem in two parts. The first, directed by the late Mircea Veroiu, follows a widow’s travails as she toils ...

Directed by Dmytro Moiseiev • 2024 • Ukraine

January, 2022, on the eve of the Russian invasion. Retired miners Serhiich (Viktor Zhdanov) and Pashka (Volodymyr Yamnenko) are the sole remaining residents of a Donbas village in the “grey zone” between Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces. Cut off from ...

Directed by Liviu Ciulei • 1965 • Romania

The Eastern Front during the First World War. Lieutenant Apostol Bologa (Victor Rebengiuc) fights on the side of the multi-ethnic Habsburg Army against the forces of his native Romania. As the absurdity of the conflict becomes impossible to ignore, and u...

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 Henrik Malyan • 1969 • USSR/Armenia

When a petty dispute over a lost sheep gets out of hand, a group of shepherds find their mountain idyll interrupted by the long arm of the law in Henrik Malyan’s cult Soviet satire, adapted from his own work by beloved Armenian author Hrant Matevos...

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 Eduard Novikov • 2018 • Russia

Set in the 1930s, Eduard Novikov’s adaptation of Vasily Yakovlev’s short story follows an elderly couple deep in the Russian taiga. When they find themselves playing host to an unexpected guest one winter — a sacred eagle – they fear its arrival signals...

Directed by Lucian Pintilie • 1968 • Romania

Voted the greatest Romanian film of all time, Lucian Pintilie’s heady blend of political theatre and uproarious slapstick remains hugely influential to this day. George Mihăiţă and Vladimir Găitan play two students arrested following a drunken brawl a...

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 Kirill Serebrennikov • 2016 • Russia

Released a year before the politically-motivated house arrest that ultimately saw him leave Russia for good, Kirill Serebrennikov’s fierce drama of spiritual fervour now seems grimly prescient. Venya (Pyotr Skvortstov) seems like a typical maladju...

Directed by Béla Tarr • 2000 • Hungary
Please note this title is not available to subscribers in the US

Perhaps the finest expression of Béla Tarr’s unique cinematic philosophy, Werckmeister Harmonies is a mysterious and gripping parable of social collapse. Adapted from his own novel The Melanch...

Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1969 • Czechoslovakia
Please note this title is not available to subscribers in the US

Adapted from the breakout novel by the great Milan Kundera, The Joke is one of Czech cinema’s most piercing political statements. During the Stalinist era, happy-go-lucky student Lu...

Directed by Andrzej Wajda • 1975 • Poland

Adapted from the classic novel by Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont, Andrzej Wajda’s The Promised Land is a stunning period epic about Poland’s painful transition to industrial modernity. In late nineteenth-century Łódź, three friends – one Polish, one Je...

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 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 Yakov Protazanov • 1924 • USSR/Russia

“Anta Odeli Uta”. This cryptic wireless message, broadcast around the world, is the spark for interplanetary romance and revolution in Yakov Protazanov’s sci-fi classic. Tormented by the notion that the signal is coming from Mars, engineer Los em...

Directed by Aleksandr Askoldov • 1967 • USSR/Russia

When a Red Army officer is forced to shelter with a Jewish family while seeing her unwanted pregnancy to term, she finds her fierce communist values at odds with their sprawling generosity. Over time, these two worlds are brought closer togethe...