Directed by Elene Mikaberidze • 2024 • Georgia

In a village in northern Georgia, retired engineer Soso has decided to turn his hand to farming blueberries. Together with his wife and two sons, he throws himself into the venture in an attempt to secure a future for his family in this conflict-rav...

Directed by Elvin Adigozel • 2025 • Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani writer-director Elvin Adigozel confirms his status as a major talent in Caucasian filmmaking with this darkly funny tale of friendship and artistic ambition gone wrong. Wedding musicians in rural Azerbaijan, Babek and Sahil (Kamil Nazim ...

Directed by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio • 2000 • Finland

A groundbreaking work of Indigenous cinema, Seven Songs of the Tundra is Anastasia Lapsui’s greatest tribute to her native Nenets culture. A nomadic people native to Siberia, the Nenets found their traditional way of life disr...

Directed by Pavel G. Vesnakov • 2024 • Bulgaria

When his estranged father dies, taciturn Koko (rapper Ognyan “Fyre” Pavlov) returns to his native Bulgaria after years spent working abroad. As Koko tries to put the late man’s affairs in order, he is drawn ineluctably back into a world he thought ...

Directed by Laurynas Bareiša • 2024 • Lithuania

Lithuania’s Laurynas Bareiša establishes himself as one of the Baltics’ most promising filmmakers with this captivating and elliptical family drama. Sisters Ernesta (Gelminė Glemžaitė) and Justė (Agnė Kaktaitė) are spending a weekend away at their ...

Directed by Nina Guseva • 2021 • Russia

The summer of 2019 saw Moscow gripped by protests following attempts to block opposition candidates from standing in local elections. Nearly 3,000 demonstrators were arrested. Nina Guseva’s immersive, gut-wrenching documentary follows one defendant, Konsta...

Directed by Luka Beradze • 2023 • Georgia

During the 2012 presidential elections in Georgia, the incumbent Mikheil Saakashvili made a strange offer to citizens in the country’s neglected rural outposts: in exchange for their votes, his party would provide them with new teeth. Residents began to ...

Directed by Maria Zbąska • 2024 • Poland

Maria Zbąska’s debut film is a charmingly cynical romantic comedy about rediscovering love in the darkest (and coldest) of places. Wanda (Zofia Chabiera) and Janek (Marcin Sztabiński) have reached an impasse in their marriage. He proposes a radical soluti...

Directed by Wojciech Has • 1973 • Poland

Wojciech Has’s surrealist masterpiece is a moving and profoundly strange exploration of memory and the lost world of the Jewish shtetl. Freely adapting the short stories of the great Polish-Jewish author Bruno Schulz, Has constructs a phantasmagoria in wh...

Directed by Kazimierz Kutz • 1960 • Poland

Also known as Nobody’s Calling, Kazimierz Kutz’s haunting post-war romance is a portrait of a nation on its knees and hope among the ruins. In the chaotic days after Poland’s liberation, Bożek (Henryk Boukołowski), a former resistance fighter with a dan...

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 Olga and Priit Pärn • 2008 • Estonia

An alternative Valentine’s Day treat from the husband-and-wife team behind some of Eastern Europe’s most mind-bending cult animation. In twitchy, electric monochrome, the film follows the travails of a couple, Viktor and Anna, who struggle to reco...

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 Marko Raat • 2024 • Estonia

Marko Raat’s mysterious, mesmerising film poem transports us to the spiritual heart of Estonia by way of Japan. Inspired by the “eight views” landscape painting tradition of East Asia, Raat’s film unfolds on the seemingly idyllic shores of Lake Peipsi on t...

Directed by Alisa Kovalenko • 2023 • Ukraine

Alisa Kovalenko’s collective portrait of teenagers in the Donbas just prior to the full-scale invasion is a moving tribute to a world of opportunity now lost to military aggression. Andriy, Illia, Lera, Liza, and Ruslan have come of age in a world whe...

Directed by Adilkhan Yerzhanov • 2020 • Kazakhstan

A movie-obsessed ex-con and his sultry female companion are lovers on the lam in Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s droll and touching crime caper. Kermek (Azamat Nigmanov) returns from the joint to his native Kazakh village with a dream: to build a cinema on...

Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski • 1988 • Poland
Please note this title is not available to subscribers in the US

Expanded from an episode of Kieślowski’s epic television serial Dekalog, A Short Film about Love represents the Polish master at his most sensitive and daring. By day, 19-year-old To...

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 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 Arūnas Žebriūnas • 1969 • USSR/Lithuania

A poignant portrait of innocence and experience, Arūnas Žebriūnas’ exquisite drama captures the inner world of childhood with unusual clarity. Six-year-old Inga (Inga Mickytė) lives with her devoted but melancholy single mother (Lilija Žadeiky...

Directed by Rolands Kalniņš • 1967 • USSR/Latvia

The countercultural spirit of the sixties runs through this cult musical drama from Latvia, which thumbed its nose at the prevailing Soviet orthodoxy of the era and was rarely screened as a result. By day, Cēzars Kalniņš is a telephone repairman; ...

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 Vuk Ršumović • 2024 • Serbia

Based on real events, Vuk Ršumović’s Dwelling Among the Gods recasts the human drama of the migrant experience as a modern-day Greek tragedy. Co-written by journalist Momir Turudić and drawing on his experiences reporting on the so-called migration “crisi...

Directed by Nadejda Koseva • 2024 • Bulgaria

Nadejda Koseva’s sophomore feature is a portrait of man at war with nature and himself. On the banks of the Danube, an elderly loner named Yovo (Alexander Trifonov) tends to his private zoo. His reclusive life is upended when his dog is enlisted for a...

Directed by László Csáki • 2024 • Hungary

László Csáki’s livewire animated documentary recreates the anything-goes atmosphere of the early nineties, when borders were toppling across Europe. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, young Hungarians dreamed of finally travelling abroad – but few could...

Directed by Kristoffer Hegnsvad • 2022 • Canada

Over more than 20 years of travel across the former Soviet Union, Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig has painstakingly documented the humble bus stop. From Ukraine to Uzbekistan, the bus stop provided local architects with a canvas for indivi...

Directed by Jiří Trnka • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Please note this title is not available to subscribers in the US

“The Walt Disney of Eastern Europe”, Jiří Trnka was one of the most influential figures in Czech animation history. This subversive allegorical short, one of his most poignant creation...

Directed by Olga Chernykh • 2023 • Ukraine

Olga Chernykh’s intimate, essayistic documentary examines the war in Ukraine through the eyes of three generations of women from a displaced Donetsk family. The director’s grandmother remains in occupied Donbas, while her mother now works in a Kyiv morg...

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 Dóra Keresztes and István Orosz • 1985 • Hungary

Recalling the avant-garde artistry of Chagall and Kandinsky, as well as the folk traditions of the Carpathians, this short from master animators Dóra Keresztes and István Orosz is a fine example of the Hungarian psychedelic school. Dep...

Directed by István Orosz • 1989 • Hungary

A late socialist take on M. C. Escher from the master of the mathematical and the absurd, István Orosz. Mind the Steps! reimagines a typical apartment block in Budapest from the ever-shifting perspective of a young boy. The architecture and its inhabitan...

Directed by Richard Viktorov • 1981 • USSR/Russia

Richard Viktorov’s newly restored cult classic is one of the most striking Soviet sci-fi features. Scripted by the beloved author Kir Bulychyov, Per Aspera Ad Astra blends childlike wonder at the cosmos with the cynicism of the Brezhnev era. Elen...

Directed by Ilya Povolotsky • 2023 • Russia

An unnamed father and daughter traverse the empty roads of provincial Russia in a battered old van, eking out a living selling pirated DVDs at the impromptu screenings they mount with an onboard mobile cinema. Ilya Povolotsky’s compellingly strange deb...

Directed by Janyl Jusupjan • 2023 • Kyrgyzstan

Buzkashi is a traditional sport of Central Asia in which teams of horsemen battle to carry a goat carcass across a goal line. In this strictly gendered world, only men can play the game – but there are windows of opportunity for enterprising women. ...

Directed by Maryna Er Gorbach • 2022 • Ukraine

Maryna Er Gorbach’s gripping and poetic war drama looks back ten years to the fateful summer of 2014 and the early days of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Expectant parents Irka and Tolik (Oksana Cherkashyna and Serhiy Shadrin) find themselves caught b...

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 Jiří Menzel • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
Please note this title is not available to subscribers in the US

The film that announced the Czech New Wave to the world, Jiří Menzel’s beloved debut is a humanist comedy of errors and a minor-key ode to rebellion. Adapted from Bohumil Hrabal’s nov...

Directed by Ester Krumbachová • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
Please note this film is not available to subscribers in the US

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 Aleksandr Abaturov • 2022 • Russia

Alexander Abaturov’s climate crisis documentary is a dreamlike but gripping account of a community battling forces beyond their control. In the Sakha Republic in northeastern Siberia, heatwaves have led to ever more devastating wildfires that ravage...

Directed by Radu Jude • 2023 • Romania

The Potemkinists crams everything we love about Radu Jude into 18 minutes: playful deconstruction of national myth, deep knowledge of film history, and plenty of satirical obscenity. In 2021, a sculptor (Alexandru Dabija) brings a cultural bureaucrat (Crist...

Directed by Radu Jude • 2021 • Romania

Radu Jude is at his mischievous best in this striking short that sets out to tell the story of human life – from birth to old age – entirely through carefully constructed dioramas of childrens’ toys. Barbie dolls and plastic dinosaurs coexist with communist...

Directed by Radu Jude • 2018 • Romania

In 1946, Romania’s wartime dictator and Nazi collaborator Marshal Ion Antonescu was executed, alongside three other officials. The incident was captured by amateur cameraman Ovidiu Gologan. In 1994, director Sergiu Nicolaescu recreated the scene for his per...

Directed by Radu Jude • 2006 • Romania

Radu Jude’s debut short announced a major filmmaking talent to the world back in 2006, winning at Sundance and Cottbus. A father and son haul a battered old TV set through mud and rain to the nearest town, hoping to get it fixed in time for a Bruce Lee film...

Directed by Dušan Makavejev • 1964 • Yugoslavia
Please not this title is not available to subscribers in the US

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 Aleksandar Petrović • 1965 • Yugoslavia

The first mature masterpiece from a figurehead of Yugoslav film, Three established Aleksandar Petrović at the forefront of the so-called Black Wave movement. Across a triptych of stories, we follow a soldier named Miloš (iconic actor Velimir “B...

Directed by Giedrė Žickytė • 2020 • Lithuania

On Thanksgiving Day, 1970, off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Lithuanian seaman Simas Kudirka made a daring leap for freedom, diving from his Soviet fishing vessel onto a nearby US patrol boat. When US officials returned Kudirka to the Soviets, he w...

Directed by Zoltán Fábri • 1976 • Hungary

Considered by many to be Zolán Fábri’s masterpiece, The Fifth Seal is a war drama with a difference. During the brief, brutal rule of the fascist Arrow Cross Party in the closing days of the Second World War, five friends convene in a Budapest bar. Watch...

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 Oleksiy Radynski • 2023 • Ukraine

In the early days of the Russian invasion in 2022, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was used as a staging post on the road to Kyiv. Oleksiy Radynski’s Chornobyl 22 documents their brief, terrifying occupation of the site. Interviews with plant staff who w...

Directed by Šimon Holý • 2021 • Czechia

Šimon Holý’s inventive debut, a reimagination of the romance genre, announced him as one of Czech film’s most promising young directors. Marie (Alena Doláková) is a dancer who has just turned 30. Facing down her millennial angst, she and her boyfriend Fran...

Directed by Michał Toczek • 2022 • Poland

Michał Toczek’s charming Polish short weaves warm-hearted romance out of the lonely tedium of gig work and big-budget filmmaking. Downtrodden Filip (Sebastian Stankiewicz) is a professional film extra who specialises in playing dead bodies. On the set of...

Directed by Kateryna Khramtsova • 2023 • Ukraine

Kateryna Khramtsova’s documentary short Qirim – the native Tatar name for Crimea – is a portrait of Antonina Romanova: a non-binary performance artist turned mortar technician in the Ukrainian army. Incorporating animation and split-screen techniq...

Directed by Assel Aushakimova • 2021 • Kazakhstan

Assel Aushakimova (Welcome to the USA) shows why she is one of the most acute observers of contemporary Kazakh society with this droll satirical short. When a local reporter from state television is sent to capture a PR stunt from the Kazakh poli...

Directed by Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko • 2022 • Uzbekistan

The fate of the Aral Sea, which spans the Uzbek-Kazakh border, is one of the twentieth century’s greatest environmental disasters. Ravaged by Soviet industrial policy, this once abundant inland ocean has long since become the...

Directed by Alexandre Koberidze • 2021 • Georgia

Alexandre Koberidze’s existential fairy tale unfolds like a dream over a long, hot summer of thwarted romance and World Cup fever. In Georgia’s ancient capital Kutaisi, pharmacist Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze) and footballer Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) f...

Directed by Asif Rustamov • 2022 • Azerbaijan

Asif Rustamov’s erotic, ironic psychodrama is a breath of fresh air for Azerbaijani cinema. A struggling, one-eyed artist (Elshen Esgerov) ekes out a living carving gravestones while engaged in a passionate but provocative affair with a married woman...

Directed by George Ovashvili • 2014 • Georgia

George Ovashvili’s award-winning drama is both a political parable and a portrait of man’s relationship with nature. In the Enguri River that divides Georgia from the disputed territory of Abkhazia, washed-up debris forms a tiny island – a lifeline f...

Directed by George Ovashvili • 2022 • Georgia

When 25-year-old Helen (Natia Cikviladze) returns to Georgia from studying in New York, she discovers a country transformed. Trying to find her way, she takes up a position as assistant to a struggling older filmmaker working on a new script with unc...

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1986 • Sweden

The final film from the great Andrei Tarkovsky is a moving meditation on faith and family that builds to one of the most famous climaxes in film history. Produced in exile in Sweden with a crew of Ingmar Bergman’s closest collaborators, The Sacrifice ...

Directed by Andrei Tarkosvky • 1983 • Italy/USSR/Russia

The first film that Andrei Tarkovsky made outside of the Soviet Union, Nostalghia is one of the great director’s most wistful and intimate features. Co-written with Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra, the story explores the sense of dislo...