Directed by Elene Mikaberidze • 2024 • Georgia

In a village in northern Georgia, retired engineer Soso has decided to turn his hand to farming blueberries. Together with his wife and two sons, he throws himself into the venture in an attempt to secure a future for his family in this conflict-rav...

Directed by Elvin Adigozel • 2025 • Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani writer-director Elvin Adigozel confirms his status as a major talent in Caucasian filmmaking with this darkly funny tale of friendship and artistic ambition gone wrong. Wedding musicians in rural Azerbaijan, Babek and Sahil (Kamil Nazim ...

Directed by Pavel G. Vesnakov • 2024 • Bulgaria

When his estranged father dies, taciturn Koko (rapper Ognyan “Fyre” Pavlov) returns to his native Bulgaria after years spent working abroad. As Koko tries to put the late man’s affairs in order, he is drawn ineluctably back into a world he thought ...

Directed by Laurynas Bareiša • 2024 • Lithuania

Lithuania’s Laurynas Bareiša establishes himself as one of the Baltics’ most promising filmmakers with this captivating and elliptical family drama. Sisters Ernesta (Gelminė Glemžaitė) and Justė (Agnė Kaktaitė) are spending a weekend away at their ...

Directed by Wojciech Has • 1973 • Poland

Wojciech Has’s surrealist masterpiece is a moving and profoundly strange exploration of memory and the lost world of the Jewish shtetl. Freely adapting the short stories of the great Polish-Jewish author Bruno Schulz, Has constructs a phantasmagoria in wh...

Directed by Olga and Priit Pärn • 2008 • Estonia

An alternative Valentine’s Day treat from the husband-and-wife team behind some of Eastern Europe’s most mind-bending cult animation. In twitchy, electric monochrome, the film follows the travails of a couple, Viktor and Anna, who struggle to reco...

Directed by Kazimierz Kutz • 1960 • Poland

Also known as Nobody’s Calling, Kazimierz Kutz’s haunting post-war romance is a portrait of a nation on its knees and hope among the ruins. In the chaotic days after Poland’s liberation, Bożek (Henryk Boukołowski), a former resistance fighter with a dan...

Directed by Marko Raat • 2024 • Estonia

Marko Raat’s mysterious, mesmerising film poem transports us to the spiritual heart of Estonia by way of Japan. Inspired by the “eight views” landscape painting tradition of East Asia, Raat’s film unfolds on the seemingly idyllic shores of Lake Peipsi on t...

Directed by László Csáki • 2024 • Hungary

László Csáki’s livewire animated documentary recreates the anything-goes atmosphere of the early nineties, when borders were toppling across Europe. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, young Hungarians dreamed of finally travelling abroad – but few could...

Directed by Vuk Ršumović • 2024 • Serbia

Based on real events, Vuk Ršumović’s Dwelling Among the Gods recasts the human drama of the migrant experience as a modern-day Greek tragedy. Co-written by journalist Momir Turudić and drawing on his experiences reporting on the so-called migration “crisi...

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 ...

Directed by Olga Chernykh • 2023 • Ukraine

Olga Chernykh’s intimate, essayistic documentary examines the war in Ukraine through the eyes of three generations of women from a displaced Donetsk family. The director’s grandmother remains in occupied Donbas, while her mother now works in a Kyiv morg...

Directed by Maryna Er Gorbach • 2022 • Ukraine

Maryna Er Gorbach’s gripping and poetic war drama looks back ten years to the fateful summer of 2014 and the early days of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Expectant parents Irka and Tolik (Oksana Cherkashyna and Serhiy Shadrin) find themselves caught b...

Directed by Giedrė Žickytė • 2020 • Lithuania

On Thanksgiving Day, 1970, off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Lithuanian seaman Simas Kudirka made a daring leap for freedom, diving from his Soviet fishing vessel onto a nearby US patrol boat. When US officials returned Kudirka to the Soviets, he w...

Directed by Šimon Holý • 2021 • Czechia

Šimon Holý’s inventive debut, a reimagination of the romance genre, announced him as one of Czech film’s most promising young directors. Marie (Alena Doláková) is a dancer who has just turned 30. Facing down her millennial angst, she and her boyfriend Fran...

Directed by George Ovashvili • 2022 • Georgia

When 25-year-old Helen (Natia Cikviladze) returns to Georgia from studying in New York, she discovers a country transformed. Trying to find her way, she takes up a position as assistant to a struggling older filmmaker working on a new script with unc...

Directed by Aizhan Kassymbek • 2023 • Kazakhstan

Aizhan Kassymbek’s sophomore feature confirms her place as one of Kazakhstan’s most promising filmmakers. Based on the true story of the director’s friend Madina Akylbek – who tackles the lead role with remarkable courage – the film follows a sing...

Directed by Norika Sefa • 2021 • Kosovo

Transporting the classic coming-of-age tale to rural Kosovo, Norika Sefa’s Looking for Venera announced the emergence of another bold filmmaking talent from Europe’s youngest nation. Teenaged Venera (Kosovare Krasniqi) struggles against the constraints of ...

Directed by Inna Sahakyan • 2022 • Armenia

Inna Sahakyan’s exquisite and heartbreaking animation retraces the scarcely believable biography of Aurora Mardiganian: a survivor of the Armenian Genocide who became a silent movie star. After surviving the infamous “death marches”, Mardiganian fled fr...

Directed by Katalin Moldovai • 2023 • Hungary

Debutante Katalin Moldovai delivers a stinging tale of conservative reaction and bureaucratic absurdity in modern Hungary. Ana (Ágnes Krasznahorkai) is a beloved literature teacher whose world is turned upside down when the powerful father of one of ...