Directed by Borys Ivchenko • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine

A wartime melodrama shot through with the folkloric magic and vivid imagination that defined Ukraine’s so-called “poetic cinema” of the 1960s. In the dark days of Nazi occupation, a young girl native to the Carpathian mountains falls in love with ...

Directed by István Szabó • 1980 • Hungary

Arguably the first mature masterpiece from one of Hungary’s greatest auteurs, Confidence is a perfectly controlled study in suspicion and longing. Set in a cowering Budapest in 1944, it follows two strangers forced to pose as a married couple in order t...

Directed by Miklós Jancsó • 1965 • Hungary

In the final days of the Second World War, a young Hungarian soldier, Jóska, makes his way home through a landscape riddled with debris and destruction. After he is captured by the occupying Red Army, he forms a bond with the Russian soldier Kolya, desp...

Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov • 2002 • Russia

Heralded as a new Russian masterpiece on its release in 2002, Aleksandr Sokurov’s revolutionary period drama unfolds in a single unbroken take, transporting the viewer through three centuries of history as contained within St Petersburg’s famous Herm...

Directed by Wojciech Marczewski • 1981 • Poland

Wojciech Marczewski’s chilling, beguiling sophomore feature transports the classic coming-of-age tale to 1950s Poland. Following his father’s arrest, 13-year old Tomek (Tomasz Hudziec) is sent to a youth camp designed to indoctrinate future Communi...

Directed by Sergei Loznitsa • 2010 • Russia/Ukraine

The first Ukrainian production ever to compete for the Palme d’Or, My Joy marked the fiction debut in one of the most vital directorial careers in modern film. Sergei Loznitsa’s grimly compelling excavation of the past and future of Russian nat...

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 Paweł Pawlikowski • 2013 • Poland

Paweł Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning period road movie excavates the sins of Poland’s twentieth-century history. It is 1962, and Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), an orphan given up to a convent during the war, is on the verge of taking her monastic vows. But...

Directed by Sergei Eisenstein • 1926 • USSR/Russia

A founding masterpiece of silent cinema, studied the world over for its radical montage techniques and still shocking today, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin was originally conceived as part of a cycle of films commemorating the revolutio...

Directed by Olesya Morgunets-Isaenko • 2022 • Ukraine

Set against a backdrop of occupation and dispossession, Olesya Morgunets-Isaenko’s seasonal wartime melodrama is a heartbreaking but inspiring insight into Ukraine’s troubled history between empires. In the town of Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Fran...

Directed by the Vasilyev Brothers • 1934 • USSR/Russia

This biopic of Vasily Chapaev, peasant turned mythical military hero, is perhaps the most canonical film of state-sponsored Socialist Realism. Charting Chapaev’s campaign in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, frenetic action is juxta...

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...

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...

Directed by Lauri Randla • 2020 • Estonia

Described by director Lauri Randla as “the Soviet Amélie”, this popular coming-of-age story captures the absurdity and the poignancy of late Soviet life. Set in Leningrad 3, a small Estonian town complete with a secret nuclear facility, the film follows ...

Directed by Hamo Bek-Nazaryan • 1928 • USSR/Armenia/Azerbaijan

To celebrate the centenary of Armenian film, we present a new restoration of this neglected silent classic by Hamo Bek-Nazaryan, the founding father of the nation’s cinema. A co-production of the Armenian and Azerbaijani national stu...

Directed by Aleksei German • 1998 • Russia

Moscow, February 1953. General Yuri Klensky is a prominent brain surgeon, living a life of luxury and prestige – until he is accused of being part of a plot to kill Stalin. The story of his arrest, torture, and eventual “freedom” upon Stalin’s own death...

Directed by Andrzej Wajda • 1981 • Poland

One of many peaks in the long career of the Polish maestro, Man of Iron is a sequel to Wajda’s 1977 drama Man of Marble. Winkel (Marian Opania), a disgruntled radio reporter, is sent to Gdańsk to discredit Tomczyk (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), one of the leader...

Directed by Ildikó Enyedi • 1989 • Hungary
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Ildikó Enyedi’s award-winning debut is a whimsical, satirical allegory for the moral decay of the past hundred years, and a love letter to the magical early years of cinema itself. Born on th...

Directed by Gleb Panfilov • 1967 • USSR/Russia

The debut feature from Gleb Panfilov, marking his first collaboration with his future wife and muse Inna Churikova, No Path Through Fire is a classic of sixties cinema. Set during the Russian Civil War and following the fate of military nurse Tanya,...

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 Boris Barnet • 1933 • USSR/Russia

Set in a provincial backwater on the eve of the First World War, this reflective drama from one of Soviet cinema’s most underrated directors is a milestone in Russian-language film history. One of the first notable Russian films to be shot with sound...

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 Yuri Ilyenko • 1971 • USSR/Ukraine

Yuri Ilyenko’s landmark film follows the Zvonars, a family of poor musicians, as personal and geopolitical crises collide across the course of the tumultuous 1940s. Set in the region of Bukovina, on the border between Ukraine and Romania, Ilyenko’s ...

Directed by Miroslav Antić • 1971 • Yugoslavia

Acclaimed poet turned filmmaker Miroslav Antić made his indelible contribution to the Yugoslav Black Wave with this apocalyptic tale of love among the ruins of war and natural disaster. Set in 1947, the film captures life in a Vojvodina village duri...