Directed by Jan Švankmajer • 1990 • Czechoslovakia

Czech animator Jan Švankmajer is a living legend, his alternately grotesque, heartfelt, and hilarious creations influencing a generation of artists. In this satirical short, commissioned by the BBC shortly after the Velvet Revolution had brought...

Directed by Sergei Dvortsevoy • 1998 • Russia

Once a week, a passing train delivers bread to the isolated population of Township No. 3, a dilapidated hamlet outside of St Petersburg. And every week, the ailing pensioners who now populate this abandoned labour commune push the decoupled carriage ...

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 Alex Kvatashidze • 2016 • Georgia

Georgian photographer and journalist Alex Kvatashidze searches for meaning in the tragedies and triumphs of his life in this reflective documentary about the men and women who make war their livelihoods. From his naive initial decision to follow a Fr...

Directed by Aktan Arym Kubat • 2022 • Kyrgyzstan

The latest feature from a modern master of Krygyz film, This Is What I Remember is a quiet reckoning with a life lived in self-imposed exile. The director himself stars as Zarlyk, an elderly man who returns to his home village after years spent as...

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 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 Ihor Ivanko • 2022 • Ukraine

In the 1960s and ‘70s, films shot by Ukrainian cinematographer Leonid Burlaka for the Odesa Film Studio were known to millions across the USSR. Today, suffering with Alzheimer’s, he has lost touch with these past glories, his work scattered throughout dis...

Directed by Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys • 2018 • Latvia/Lithuania

Acclaimed documentarians Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys honour their cinematic heritage in this meditative essay film about the “poetic documentary” school that came to define Baltic filmmaking. Emerging in the Soviet 1...

Directed by Călin Peter Netzer • 2017 • Romania

From Berlinale-winning director Călin Peter Netzer (Child’s Pose), this intricate and intimate dissection of a long-term relationship is one of the most striking Romanian films of the 2010s. Charting the heady highs and agonising lows of the romanc...

Directed by Radu Jude • 2018 • Romania

Radu Jude’s incendiary assault on nationalist myth-making and historical hypocrisy represents a high point in one of Romanian cinema’s most compelling careers. This meta-fictional film follows theatre director Mariana (Ioana Iacob) as she attempts to stage...

Directed by Dalibor Matanić • 2015 • Croatia

Dalibor Matanić weaves together three tales of love across the ethnic divides of the former Yugoslavia in this Cannes-winning drama. Structured as three distinct narratives each set a decade apart in the same two Dalmatian villages, the strands of The...

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska • 2018 • Poland

Two years after she wandered up the railway tracks into Warsaw’s main train station, an anonymous amnesiac woman who calls herself Alicja is unexpectedly reunited with her lost family. But the anarchic, free-spirited woman who arrives on their doo...

Directed by Angelina Nikonova • 2011 • Russia

Marina (co-writer Olga Dykhovichnaya) lives a stable, prosperous, and somewhat boring life with a husband and a job as a social worker. Everything changes, however, when a violent sexual assault turns her life on its head, transforming her into a “tw...

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Directed by Cristi Puiu • 2010 • Romania

After bringing international acclaim to the Romanian New Wave with The Death of Mr Lăzărescu, Cristi Puiu returned with this stunning and enigmatic portrait of urban unease and masculinity in crisis. The director himsel...

Directed by Miroslav Terzić • 2019 • Serbia

Based on true events, Miroslav Terzić’s Stitches reckons with a forgotten trauma from the time of Yugoslavia’s collapse. Ana (a remarkable Snežana Bogdanović) is a Belgrade seamstress who is haunted by the loss of her stillborn son 18 years previousl...

Directed by Ralitza Petrova • 2016 • Bulgaria

Ralitza Petrova’s uncompromising portrait of Bulgarian society’s spiritual decline is one of the most vital films to emerge from the Balkans in the last decade. First-time actor Irena Ivanova is impassively impressive as Gana, a social care nurse who...

Directed by Vakhtang Tabliashvili and Shalva Gedevanishvili • 1948 • USSR/Georgia

Georgia’s first musical, Keto and Kote is a baroque love story about the triumph of youth and ingenuity over cynicism and greed. Keto (Medea Japaridze), the daughter of a rich merchant from Tbilisi, and Kote (Batu ...

Directed by Zaza Khalvashi • 2017 • Georgia

The final film completed by veteran director Zaza Khalvashi before his death in 2020, Namme is a meditation on tradition and modernity that makes exquisite use of Georgia’s mountain landscapes. At its heart, this is a family drama, centred on ageing pa...

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Directed by Eldar Shengelaia • 2017 • Georgia

Shengelaia’s first film for 21 years is a late-career return to form that picks up the threads of his earlier satires and reconfigures them for the modern day. Minister for Refugee Evictions Giorgi Mchedlishvili (N...

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 Eldar Shengelaia and Tamaz Meliava • 1963 • USSR/Georgia

Eldar Shengelaia’s first mature feature, co-directed with Tamaz Meliava, is a forceful, poetic take on the timeless conflict between the countryside and the city, reminiscent of Murnau’s silent classic Sunrise. The tragic plot ...

Directed by Radu Ciorniciuc • 2020 • Romania

Filmed over four years, Radu Ciorniciuc’s profoundly empathetic and engaged documentary explores the true costs and rewards of a life lived off the grid. The Enaches – stern, anti-establishment patriarch Gică, wife Niculina, and their nine children –...

Directed by Kateryna Gornostai • 2021 • Ukraine
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A stunning addition to the canon of coming-of-age dramas, Kateryna Gornostai’s debut film is a tender and authentic portrait of teenagers in contemporary Ukraine, produced shortly bef...

Directed by Adam Koloman Rybanský • 2022 • Czechia

Broňa and Standa are volunteer firefighters and drinking buddies in a small Czech village where opportunities for heroism are few and far between. A traffic accident during the community’s Easter celebrations gives the duo a case to investigate ...

Directed by Srdjan Dragojević • 2021 • Serbia

Cult director Srdjan Dragojević returns with this belligerent and typically Balkan black comedy of belief and disillusionment. Tracing the story of a single family across three stories that span 30 years, Heavens Above explores the notion of miracles...

Directed by Miloš Pušić • 2022 • Serbia

A punkish slap in the face of good taste, Miloš Pušić’s blue collar satire takes aim at the degradations and manipulations of the profiteers who grease the wheels of everyday urban decay. Businesswoman Lidija (Jasna Đuričić, the breakout star of Jasmila Žb...

Directed by Olmo Omerzu • 2018 • Czechia

Czech-Slovenian director Olmo Omerzu burnished his reputation as one of Central Europe’s leading lights with this seasonal tale of misadventure and self-discovery. Shaven-headed, boastful Marek (Tomáš Mrvík) and his doleful younger companion Heduš (Jan Fr...

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 Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze • 2022 • Georgia

One of the breakout hits of recent Georgian cinema, A Room of My Own is a quietly revolutionary take on female friendship and the passage to self-emancipation. Co-writer Taki Mumladze stars as Tina, a shy young divorcee with a troubled past who f...

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 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 Emanuel Pârvu • 2021 • Romania

The sophomore directorial effort from renowned Romanian actor Emanuel Pârvu, Mikado is a taut family drama that recalls the high points of the country’s celebrated New Wave cinema. While visiting her boyfriend at a local oncology ward, teenager Magda (A...

Directed by Karel Steklý • 1956 • Czechoslovakia

Of the many screen adaptations of Jaroslav Hašek’s beloved novel, this delightful farce is the most enduringly popular. Written and directed by the redoutable Karel Steklý and with Rudolf Hrušínský excelling in the titular role, The Good Soldier Š...

Directed by Aysulu Onaran • 2022 • Kazakhstan

A coming-of-age drama that doubles as a parable of sexual liberation, Balaban shines a light on the margins of Kazakh society. Aysulu Onaran’s debut feature is inspired by a real-life scandal: in 2006, 160 Kazakh children were infected with HIV follo...

Directed by Dušan Milić • 2022 • Serbia

Dušan Milić’s psychological horror wrings tension out of the uneasy truce in post-war Kosovo. In a remote and dwindling Serbian community, safeguarded by KFOR peacekeepers, bereaved grandfather Milutin (veteran Yugoslav actor Slavko Štimac) and his family ...

Directed by Róbert Koltai • 1993 • Hungary

A verifiable cult classic in Hungary, Róbert Koltai’s We Never Die combines bittersweet nostalgia with lively humour and playful dialogue. Set in the socialist 1960s, the film concerns an introverted teenager whose life is turned upside down by a few da...

Directed by Dāvis Sīmanis • 2021 • Latvia

Europe in 1913. The world stands on the brink of a cataclysmic transformation. As the madness builds, humble Latvian doorman Peter (or is it Hans?) finds himself wandering through a continent riven with apocalyptic schemes and bizarre characters. Revolut...

Directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov • 2019 • Bulgaria

Husband and wife writer-director duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov conjure up a dramedy tinged with the supernatural in this award-winning Bulgarian gem. Following the death of an elderly woman, her bereaved husband (Ivan ...

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 Otar Iosseliani • 1961 • USSR/Georgia

Iosseliani’s debut follows a young couple’s search for the perfect place to share a kiss. They soon find themselves a small, sparse flat whose kitchen taps, lights and cooker flare up in appreciation of their love, though trouble soon arrives in ...

Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky • 1966 • USSR/Russia

Collective farmer Asya is in love with the father of her unborn child. However, he does not reciprocate, leaving her forced to choose between a loveless marriage to another suitor and single motherhood. Konchalovsky’s sparsely beautiful tale o...

Directed by Dovilė Šarutytė • 2021 • Lithuania

Intensely personal and sincerely relatable, Feature Film About Life announces writer-director Šarutytė as a major new figure in Baltic film. Protagonist Dovilė's life is shaken by her father’s death. But there is no time to mourn, as she must urgent...

Directed by Anisa Sabiri • 2021 • Tajikistan

A heartfelt tribute to the ancient cultural traditions of director Anisa Sabiri’s native Tajikistan, in particular the remote mountainous region of Badakhsan. Rhythms of Lost Time focuses on traditional Tajik musical practices dating back to Zoroastri...

Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov • 1930 • USSR/Georgia

The directorial debut of Mikhail Kalatozov – who would go on to electrify Soviet cinema with his Palme d’Or-winning The Cranes are Flying – Salt for Svanetia is a groundbreaking work of radical ethnographic documentary. Capturing the lives of t...

Directed by Sergei Dvortsevoy • 2008 • Kazakhstan

Sergei Dvortsevoy’s Cannes-awarded fiction feature debut is part ethnography, part romantic comedy, and part beginners’ guide to sheep-rearing. Recently demobbed from the Russian Navy, idealistic young Asa returns to his family home on Kazakhstan...

Directed by Andres Sööt • 1988 • USSR/Estonia

1988 proved a decisive year in Estonia’s journey towards independence from the Soviet Union. Over the course of just a few months, national symbols including the Estonian flag began to proliferate in public, rifts grew between local politicians and t...

Directed by Audrius Stonys • 2016 • Lithuania

Lithuanian glaciologist Ausra Revutaite has lived alone in the Tian Shen mountains of Kazakhstan for 30 years, with only a cat and a dog for company in her battered Soviet-era cabin. Her life is utterly dedicated to the study of the Tuyuksu Glacier. ...

Directed by Roman Bondarchuk • 2018 • Ukraine

Lukas, a translator for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is transporting some foreign colleagues across the southern Ukrainian steppe, when he becomes stranded in a ramshackle small town. Can he trust the seemingly dera...

Directed by Leonid Osyka • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine

Western Ukraine in the 1890s. When elderly peasant Ivan Didukh decides to leave his Carpathian home in search of a better life in Canada, the village comes together to ceremonially mark his departure, understood as symbolic of the death of their old...

Directed by Arvo Kruusement • 1969 • USSR/Estonia

Widely considered their nation’s greatest ever film by Estonian audiences, Spring is a touching and invigorating period drama. Based on the popular novel of the same name by Oskar Luts, it tells the story of a group of rural schoolchildren at th...

Directed by István Szőts • 1948 • Hungary

A landmark film in Hungarian cinema history, István Szőts’s penultimate feature was banned for more than 30 years before being rehabilitated as a national treasure. Centring on a Hungarian soldier returning from the First World War who marries a woman he...

Directed by Aghanaghi Akhundov and Yalchin Efendiyev • 1969 • USSR/Azerbaijan

Produced at the start of the golden age of Azerbaijani animation, Akhundov and Efendiyev’s Jirtdan (meaning “small” or “dwarf”) is a magical little treat in which the titular tiny hero and his brothers must outwit the ...

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 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 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 Uldis Brauns • 1975 • USSR/Latvia

When Māris receives a motorbike for his eighteenth birthday, he hits the road with his friends. When he meets unhappy bride-to-be Inese and her thoughtless fiancé, a whirlwind romance blooms that soon sees the pair riding the roads of Soviet Latvia. ...

Directed by Eldar Shengalaia • 1968 • USSR/Georgia

An Unusual Exhibition is a typically playful and melancholic work by one of Georgia’s best-loved directors. Charting the artistic frustration and romantic elation of Aguli, a down-on-his-luck sculptor forced to produce gravestones in order to su...

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Directed by Vytautas Mikalauskas • 1957 • USSR/Lithuania

The first feature film produced solely by Lithuanian artists, Blue Horizon is a charming, affecting seaside tale. Conceived as a children’s film but with more than enough wit and intelligence to engage a...

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...