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 Dinara Asanova • 1983 • USSR/Russia

A former athlete leads a sports summer camp for troubled teens in this drama from Dinara Asanova. Famed for her use of improvisation, Asanova uses this chronicle of a summer to investigate the paradoxical vulnerability of these supposedly “tough” o...

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Directed by Ali Khamraev • 1980 • USSR/Uzbekistan

Three women’s lives intersect in a small town in Uzbekistan following the war. The first is an old woman trapped in a forced marriage; the second is a schoolteacher intent on imposing progress on the remote reg...

Directed by Rachid Nougmanov • 1988 • USSR/Kazakhstan

Part Pulp Fiction, part Betty Blue, Rachid Nougmanov’s cult punk film portrays the attempt of an enigmatic drifter (Soviet rock legend Viktor Tsoi) to free his ex-girlfriend from the clutches of a morphine-peddling surgeon. Contrasting the sh...

Directed by Kote Mikaberidze • 1929 • USSR/Georgia

This explosive, wildly inventive, and criminally under-seen gem from Kote Mikaberidze burst out of Georgia in 1929. An absurdist satire of bureaucracy, the film follows the hapless Georgiy and his struggle to overcome a cruel administrative syst...

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 Kira Muratova • 1967 • USSR/Ukraine

The debut feature from one of Russian-language cinema’s most fearless auteurs, Brief Encounters is a quietly devastating gem. Banned for twenty years and only rediscovered in the late ‘80s, this beautifully staged domestic drama uses flashbacks to ...

Directed by Eldar Shengelaia • 1983 • USSR/Georgia

This deft satire of Soviet bureaucracy from one of Georgian cinema’s great poets follows Soso, an aspiring novelist looking to publish his latest manuscript. It soon becomes apparent that the publishing house is staffed by a host of oblivious em...

Directed by Aktan Abdykalykov • 1998 • Kyrgyzstan

This award-winning film proved to be a catalyst for Kyrgyz cinema’s post-Soviet development. The second part of an autobiographical series based on director Aktan Abdykalykov’s own life, Beshkempir tells a tale of tumultuous adolescence. The pro...

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 Aleksei German • 1984 • USSR/Russia

Russian auteur Aleksei German’s masterpiece journeys into the past, as an elderly man reflects on his childhood in a communal apartment in a mid-thirties provincial town. As a nine-year-old boy, he is witness to the lives of those around him – chie...

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Directed by Vitaliy Melnikov • 1970 • USSR/Russia

A tender family drama about the close but pained relationship between a mother and her adolescent son. Divorcee Zinaida has for years been singlehandedly raising Boris, an intelligent but highly selfish young m...

Directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko • 1926 • USSR/Ukraine

A barber is shocked when his girlfriend leaves their baby in his arms. Taking care of this child was not at all in his plans – so the reluctant father tries to get rid of it. This burlesque comedy short with minimal plot, an early Soviet come...

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 Bagrat Oganesyan • 1977 • USSR / Armenia

Strikingly progressive and beautifully crafted, Bagrat Oganesyan’s Autumn Sun tells the story of Aghun (a bravado performance by the director’s own wife, Anahit Gukasyan), a simple woman forced to contend with the banal cruelties of the men wh...

Directed by Henrik Malyan • 1969 • USSR/Armenia

When a petty dispute over a lost sheep gets out of hand, a group of shepherds find their mountain idyll interrupted by the long arm of the law in Henrik Malyan’s cult Soviet satire, adapted from his own work by beloved Armenian author Hrant Matevos...

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 Tengiz Abuladze • 1976 • USSR/Georgia

This adaptation of Giorgi Leonidze’s short stories sees twenty-two episodes coalesce into one phantasmagoric narrative. Set in pre-revolutionary Georgia, it follows a young woman forced into marriage by her village elders despite her love for ano...

Directed by Eduard Novikov • 2018 • Russia

Set in the 1930s, Eduard Novikov’s adaptation of Vasily Yakovlev’s short story follows an elderly couple deep in the Russian taiga. When they find themselves playing host to an unexpected guest one winter — a sacred eagle – they fear its arrival signals...

Directed by Laila Pakalniņa • 2015 • Latvia

At once an homage to and a subversive reimagining of Soviet cinematic heritage, Laila Pakalniņa’s Dawn is one of post-independence Latvia’s most crucial films. Pakalniņa draws on the Stalinist propaganda myth of Pavlik Morozov: an ardent Pioneer who wa...

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Directed by Revaz Chkheidze • 1969 • USSR/Georgia

It is the summer of 1941, and a group of idealistic Georgian students are graduating. Their hopes for the future, however, are scuppered by the impending war. Dreams are swapped for soldiers’ overcoats as they ...

Directed by Yakov Protazanov • 1924 • USSR/Russia

“Anta Odeli Uta”. This cryptic wireless message, broadcast around the world, is the spark for interplanetary romance and revolution in Yakov Protazanov’s sci-fi classic. Tormented by the notion that the signal is coming from Mars, engineer Los em...