Klassiki Picks with Ben Rivers: 7 August – 4 September
Klassiki Picks is our series of curated watchlists personally selected for our subscribers by celebrated filmmakers, writers, and actors.
We’re delighted to welcome Ben Rivers to the hot seat for the latest edition. Ben is a celebrated filmmaker and artist whose work has been screened and presented at festivals and galleries around the world. Blending together documentary, fiction, and experimental film, he has created a unique body of work exploring states of isolation and exploration. His feature films include the critically acclaimed documentary two-parter Two Years at Sea (2011) and Bogancloch (2024), about the life of a modern-day hermit in rural Scotland; A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (2013), co-directed with Ben Russell; and Krabi, 2562 (2019), co-directed with Thai artist Anocha Suwichakornpong. His art has been exhibited at the ICA in London, Hepworth Wakefield, and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. His new film, the post-apocalyptic fable Mare’s Nest, is premiering in competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
Ben has curated a selection of four titles for Klassiki Picks that explore post-apocalyptic storytelling and sci-fi strangeness. Listen to our podcast interview with him about his choices here.
Available to Klassiki subscribers from 7 August – 4 September.
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Late August at the Hotel Ozone
Directed by Jan Schmidt • 1967 • Czechoslovakia
This lesser-known gem of the Czech New Wave is a post-apocalyptic parable about the fine line between civilisation and savagery. In the aftermath of nuclear war, a stern matriarchal figure (Beta Poničanová) leads a gang of younger women across a de...
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Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel
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 ...
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Dead Man’s Letters
Directed by Konstantin Lopushansky • 1986 • USSR/Russia
Arriving just months after the Chernobyl disaster, Konstantin Lopushansky’s post-apocalyptic prophecy is one of the final masterpieces of Soviet cinema. In a world devastated by nuclear war, a small community of survivors ekes out a life un...
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Days of Eclipse
Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov • 1988 • USSR/Turkmenistan
In the dying days of the Soviet experiment, a young doctor finds himself posted to a remote Turkmen town. Attempting to research the relationship between religious faith and medicine, he finds his efforts confounded by a series of mysterio...
