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...

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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...

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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 h...

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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 Mc...

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 ...

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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 patriar...

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Directed by Kateryna Gornostai • 2021 • Ukraine

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 before the Russian...

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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...

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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 ye...

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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 Lidi...

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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 Mrví...

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 ...

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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 Tin...

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...

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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 boy...

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...

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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...

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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 (vet...

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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 tee...

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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 a...

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 ...

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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 fol...

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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 appreciati...

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...

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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....

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...

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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 ...

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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 p...

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...

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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 departur...

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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 t...

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...

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Directed by Ildikó Enyedi • 1989 • Hungary

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 the day that Ed...

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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 grim...

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 intelligen...

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 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 Uldis Brauns • 1967 • USSR/Latvia

A landmark in the Baltic poetic documentary tradition, 235 000 000 is one of the most ambitious films of the Soviet 60s. Produced in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution – the title refers to the nominal population of the...

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Directed by Anatoly Vasiliev • 1992 • Russia

Produced for newly independent Sakha television in the early nineties, Summer House is a pioneering document of a film culture in the making. The directorial debut of actor Anatoly Vasiliev, who also s...

Directed by Marlen Khutsiev • 1956 • USSR/Ukraine

The feature debut of beloved auteur Marlen Khutsiev, Spring on Zarechnaya Street signalled a sea change in Soviet cinema on its release in 1956. Charting the romance between a literature teacher and a happy-go-lucky factory worker in provincial U...

Directed by Lana Gogoberidze • 1978 • USSR/Georgia

A pioneering work of feminist filmmaking from the legendary Lana Gogoberidze, Some Interviews on Personal Matters is one of the most vital films produced in Soviet Georgia. The iconic Sofiko Chiaureli (The Colour of Pomegranates) stars as a jour...

Directed by Kira Muratova • 1971 • USSR/Ukraine

Ukrainian auteur Kira Muratova’s sophomore directorial effort, The Long Farewell was shelved by censors until 1987, then heralded as a lost masterpiece. This simple tale of maternal jealousy and filial rebellion is transformed by Muratova into a th...

Directed by Vasili Pichul • 1988 • USSR/Russia

A scandal upon release, this hugely influential eighties cult film captures the anguished cynicism of the “last Soviet generation”. Vera (the name means “faith” in Russian, hence the pun of the title) is a teenager in a provincial port town whose da...

Directed by Igor Maslennikov • 1979 • USSR/Russia

Super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his partner Doctor Watson return to tackle the mysterious death of an American in London in the second installment of the classic Soviet adaptation. A series of murders unfolds, each marked by a macabre clue: the ...

Directed by Ivan Aksenchuk • 1968 • USSR/Russia

This exquisite Soviet animated adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale tells the story of a water-dwelling maiden, Rusalochka, who trades her voice for legs after falling in love with a human prince. The story transitions between th...

Directed by Yevgeni Bauer • 1916 • Russia

The godfather of pre-revolutionary Russian film, Yevgeni Bauer, brought all his powers to bear on this haunting melodrama. Documenting a love triangle between two sisters and a dashing prince, Life for a Life demonstrates Bauer’s mastery of production de...

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 Yuri Norstein • 1979 • Russia

The undisputed masterpiece from the reclusive Yuri Norstein, Tale of Tales is widely regarded as one of the finest animations of all time. In only 29 minutes, Norstein traverses personal and national history in almost abstract sequences that mimic the wo...

Directed by Ali Khamraev • 1985 • USSR/Uzbekistan

This hypnotic, autobiographical film is dedicated to the memory of the director’s father – actor and director Ergash Khamraev, one of the founders of Uzbek cinema. Honouring the request of his sick mother, young Tashkent native Kim sets off in se...

Directed by Juris Podnieks • 1986 • USSR/Latvia

Hailed as “the first bird of perestroika” by Mikhail Gorbachev, Juris Podnieks’ cult classic documentary is a vital document of a society on the brink of change. Podnieks shoots with compassion and anger, giving voice to a generation coming of age ...

Directed by Marlen Khutsiev • 1965 • USSR/Russia

Three lifelong friends see their aspirations juxtaposed against everyday life in 1960s Moscow, reflecting on their possible futures and their place in society. At the heart of the film is Sergei, returning from military service and grappling with ...

Directed by Otar Iosseliani • 1970 • USSR/Georgia

This lyrical caper, shot in gorgeous, low contrast black and white, portrays 36 hours in the life of Gia: a young man still living with his mother and struggling to meet social and professional expectations. A talented percussionist in the Tbilis...