Celebrating one of cinema’s great mavericks with a genre-bending new documentary tribute, plus his final two masterpieces.

With his utterly singular approach to filmmaking, Sergei Parajanov redrew the map for Soviet cinema. Martin Scorsese famously described watching his films as “like opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed.” To celebrate that creativity and bravery, we present the streaming premiere of Armenian director Zara Jian’s revelatory documentary I Will Revenge this World with Love – S. Paradjanov (2024, available until 12 March). Jian delves into her compatriot’s work in search of inspiration in the face of a world riven by war, deploying staged reconstructions, archival footage, and talking head interviews with luminaries including Atom Egoyan and Emir Kusturica. Accompanying Jian’s film are Parajanov’s own late-career masterpieces. The director made his return to filmmaking after 15 years of imprisonment and censorship with The Legend of Suram Fortress (1985), a dazzling reimagining of Georgian national myth and perhaps his most politically strident film. Meanwhile, his exquisite final feature, Ashik Kerib (1988), is an intoxicating homage to the folk legends of Azerbaijan and a transnational tribute to the past and present of the Caucasus that turns orientalism on its head.