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
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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
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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
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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 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
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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 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...

Directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev • 2014 • Russia

Andrei Zvyagintsev’s modern masterpiece recasts the Biblical parable of Job as an epic, witheringly comic treatise on life in Putin’s Russia. On the bleakly beautiful Arctic coast, mechanic Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov) lives with his withdrawn second...

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 Boštjan Hladnik • 1979 • Slovenia/Yugoslavia

This riotous, disco-drenched take on the classic whodunnit tale from socialist Slovenia is a queer cult classic in waiting. A glamorous older woman known only as “Auntie” (Duša Počkaj) lives in a stylish seaside villa, where she passes the...

Directed by Aizhan Kassymbek • 2023 • Kazakhstan

Aizhan Kassymbek’s sophomore feature confirms her place as one of Kazakhstan’s most promising filmmakers. Based on the true story of the director’s friend Madina Akylbek – who tackles the lead role with remarkable courage – the film follows a sing...

Directed by Gergő Somogyvári • 2023 • Hungary

Fanni is a 19-year-old trans woman kicked out by her family, Laci a 60-year-old homeless man. Together, they create their own domestic world – their “Fairy Garden” – in the woods outside Budapest. Shot over more than three years, Gergő Somogyvári’s t...

Directed by Norika Sefa • 2021 • Kosovo

Transporting the classic coming-of-age tale to rural Kosovo, Norika Sefa’s Looking for Venera announced the emergence of another bold filmmaking talent from Europe’s youngest nation. Teenaged Venera (Kosovare Krasniqi) struggles against the constraints of ...

Directed by Tadeusz Konwicki • 1958 • Poland

Tadeusz Konwicki’s austere but beautiful examination of life in the aftermath of tragedy is one of the most exacting early masterpieces of the Polish Film School. Made with a crew of just five, with no artificial lighting and no sets, the film unfolds...

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 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 Nikola Spasić • 2022 • Serbia

Nikola Spasić’s thoughtful, tender docufiction hybrid follows Kristina, a transgender Serbian sex worker and amateur antiquarian. A series of chance encounters with a former theology student named Marko disrupts her carefully ordered life, while openin...

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 • 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 Dmitry Davydov • 2016 • Russia/Sakha Republic

Set in the remote reaches of the Sakha Republic, The Bonfire is a modern-day parable of guilt and redemption. Dmitry Davydov’s breakthrough film centres on Ignat (Aleksei Ustinov), an elderly craftsman whose son causes the death of his co...

Directed by Maya Vitkova • 2014 • Bulgaria

In 1979, Boryana’s dreams of escaping communist Bulgaria are undone by the miraculous birth, without an umbilical cord, of her daughter Viktoria. Symbolically proclaimed “baby of the decade” by the state, Viktoria lives a pampered life until the eventua...

Directed by Eliza Petkova • 2016 • Bulgaria

Eliza Petkova’s Berlin-award-winning debut explores the tension between duty and individuality in a picturesque Bulgarian village. Lora (Anna Manolova) is a 17-year-old out of step with the traditions and rhythms of her rural home. When her father dies...

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Directed by Dragomir Sholev • 2021 • Bulgaria

When the manager of a campsite on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast discovers yet another dolphin corpse washed up on the shoreline, he decides that enough is enough. Based on real events, Dragomir Sholev’s absurdist envi...

Directed by Michael Borodin • 2022 • Russia

Based on shocking real-life events, Michael Borodin’s feature debut is a harrowing account of the hidden world of modern slavery. Mukhabat (Zukhara Sanzysbay) is one of a group of Uzbek migrants being held against their will in the Moscow grocery store...

Directed by Sybilla Tuxen • 2023 • Russia/Denmark

Danish documentarian Sybilla Tuxen’s intimate and expansive portrait of youth on the edge in modern Russia asks urgent questions about political agency and personal freedom. Following three young women – Alika, Alyona, and Katya – as they attempt...

Directed by Katalin Moldovai • 2023 • Hungary

Debutante Katalin Moldovai delivers a stinging tale of conservative reaction and bureaucratic absurdity in modern Hungary. Ana (Ágnes Krasznahorkai) is a beloved literature teacher whose world is turned upside down when the powerful father of one of ...

Directed by Andrej Korovljev • 2023 • Croatia

It is 1995, just after the end of the Bosnian War. Mahir (Ermin Bravo) is a 38-year-old refugee living with hundreds of other Bosnians in a hotel-turned-makeshift shelter. His monastic existence is upended when a local high school student named Una (...

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 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 Philip Sotnychenko • 2023 • Ukraine

Two gunshots, separated by a quarter of a century: Philip Sotnychenko’s elusive, enthralling debut feature uncovers the hidden connections between the violence of the past and the present. Shot in pseudo-documentary style on outdated digital camera...

Directed by Attila Dargay • 1977 • Hungary

A classic of Hungarian animation from the legendary Pannónia studio, Attila Dargay’s charming take on one of the nation’s favourite folk myths doubles as a playful anti-authoritarian rebuke. Following a cunning young goose shepherd in his efforts to get...

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Directed by Borys Ivchenko • 1972 • USSR/Ukraine

Borys Ivchenko’s fittingly surreal adaptation of an 1832 short story by Mykola Hohol, otherwise known as Nikolai Gogol, stars the irrepressible Ivan Mykolaichuk as a Zaporizhian Cossack and is full to bursting w...

Directed by Austėja Urbaitė • 2022 • Lithuania

The debut feature from Lithuania’s Austėja Urbaitė, the compelling Remember to Blink charts the thin line between devotion and aggression. In the secluded French countryside, Jacqueline and Léon (Anne Azoulay and Arthur Igual) are set to welcome the...

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 Antonio Lukich • 2019 • Ukraine

Twenty-five-year-old Vadym (Andriy Lidahovskiy) is a sound recordist and musician dreaming of leaving Kyiv for distant Canada. He seems to have found his route out of Ukraine when he is tasked with capturing the call of a rare duck native to the Carpat...

Directed by Vahagn Khachatryan and Aren Malakyan • 2022 • Armenia

A group portrait that captures the hybrid nature of modern-day Armenia, Vahagn Khachatryan and Aren Malakyan’s dreamlike documentary explores the gaps between fantasy and reality in the lives of four characters. Karen is a farmer ...

Directed by Damian Kocur • 2022 • Poland

Damian Kocur’s feature debut confirms his reputation as one of Poland’s most promising filmmakers. Talented pianist Tymek (Tymoteusz Bies) returns to his provincial hometown during his vacation from the Warsaw Academy of Music, and quickly falls back in w...

Directed by Ádám Császi • 2022 • Hungary

An excoriating deconstruction of liberal pieties and artistic pretensions from one of Hungary’s most exciting young filmmaking voices, Three Thousand Numbered Pieces follows the cast and crew during rehearsals for a play based on the real-life experiences...

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 Márta Mészáros • 1990 • Hungary

The devastating but hopeful conclusion to Márta Mészáros’s autobiographical Diary trilogy, which traces the life story of the orphan Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi) through Hungary’s tumultuous post-war history. Diary for My Father and Mother sees our heroine ...

Directed by Ivo Trajkov • 2022 • Slovakia

Ivo Trajkov’s exquisitely eerie blend of period drama and folk horror explores the dark depths of patriarchal cruelty and nationalist fervour. Told in a series of flashbacks, the film recounts the last days of the rural Slovak village of Piargy. The powe...