Directed by Sybilla Tuxen • 2023 • Russia/Denmark

Danish documentarian Sybilla Tuxen’s intimate and expansive portrait of youth on the edge in modern Russia asks urgent questions about political agency and personal freedom. Following three young women – Alika, Alyona, and Katya – as they attempt...

Directed by Ádám Császi • 2022 • Hungary

An excoriating deconstruction of liberal pieties and artistic pretensions from one of Hungary’s most exciting young filmmaking voices, Three Thousand Numbered Pieces follows the cast and crew during rehearsals for a play based on the real-life experiences...

Directed by Darezhan Omirbaev • 2001 • Kazakhstan

A metacinematic exploration of the anxieties, creativity, and delusion that drive the film director, The Road is one of the most personal films in the career of a Kazakh screen legend. Amir Kobessov (played by famous Tajik director Jamshed Usmono...

Directed by Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov • 1991 • USSR/Tajikistan

This restoration of the debut feature from Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov, the director who put Tajik cinema on the international map, is a gem of Central Asia film from the very end of the Soviet era. This Huckleberry Finn-style adventure foll...

Directed by Šimon Holý • 2022 • Czechia

One of the most striking new voices in Czech cinema, Šimon Holý returns with a touchingly comic take on female connection. Desperate for a way out of her loneliness, 60-something Kristýna (Pavla Tomicová) sets out for the Vysočina mountains to visit a fort...

Directed by Anna Kazejak • 2022 • Poland

Anna Kazejak’s caustic satire is a worthy addition to the canon of holidays-gone-wrong classics. A weekend camping trip on the beautiful Danish island of Bornholm quickly goes south for two couples and their children in the wake of a boyish prank taken to...

Directed by Ena Sendijarević • 2019 • Bosnia and Herzegovina/Netherlands

Dutch-Bosnian director Ena Sendijarević concocts a summery but unsentimental coming-of-age drama out of the fault lines between Western and Eastern Europe in this award-winning feature. Born and raised in the Netherlands, A...

Directed by Daniel Kötter • 2022 • Armenia/Germany

Daniel Kötter’s documentary road movie journeys through the stunning but troubled mountain landscape of eastern Armenia in an attempt to unravel the relationship between war, displacement, and extractivism. Centred around the Sotk gold mine, occ...

Directed by Comes Chahbazian • 2022 • Armenia/Belgium

A haunting evocation of the distorting effect of war on a small community, Comes Chahbazian’s Notre Village (“our village”) is a vital document of life in the disputed region of Artsakh. During the chaos of the First Karabakh War in the early...

Directed by Kote Kalandadze • 2022 • Georgia

The debut feature from renowned alternative musician Kote Kalandadze, The Drummer is a gritty, heartfelt portrait of creativity and desperation on the margins of modern Georgian society. Niko (Lasha Tskvitinidze) is an aspiring rock drummer in a crumb...

Directed by Juraj Lerotić • 2022 • Croatia

Juraj Lerotić writes, directs, and stars in this acutely moving family drama. Unfolding over 24 hours, Safe Place sees Bruno (Lerotić) and his mother (Snježana Sinovčić Šiškov) battle against a dysfunctional healthcare system and their own demons as the...

Directed by Yuliya Sergina • 2021 • Russia

Yuliya Sergina’s debut documentary charts the unlikely, unruly rise of Viktor Toroptsev, a disgruntled taxi driver-turned-vlogger from the crumbling city of Amursk in Russia’s far east. Sergina’s fittingly rough-and-ready camera captures both the humour...

Directed by Drahomíra Vihanová • 1964 • Czechoslovakia

This striking short from Drahomíra Vihanová is an unjustly neglected gem of the Czech New Wave. Julian Dìaz stars as Fati, an African piano student at the Prague Academy, preparing for his first solo recital in the face of profound personal ...

Directed by Aktan Arym Kubat • 2022 • Kyrgyzstan

The latest feature from a modern master of Krygyz film, This Is What I Remember is a quiet reckoning with a life lived in self-imposed exile. The director himself stars as Zarlyk, an elderly man who returns to his home village after years spent as...

Directed by Ihor Ivanko • 2022 • Ukraine

In the 1960s and ‘70s, films shot by Ukrainian cinematographer Leonid Burlaka for the Odesa Film Studio were known to millions across the USSR. Today, suffering with Alzheimer’s, he has lost touch with these past glories, his work scattered throughout dis...

Directed by Dalibor Matanić • 2015 • Croatia

Dalibor Matanić weaves together three tales of love across the ethnic divides of the former Yugoslavia in this Cannes-winning drama. Structured as three distinct narratives each set a decade apart in the same two Dalmatian villages, the strands of The...

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska • 2018 • Poland

Two years after she wandered up the railway tracks into Warsaw’s main train station, an anonymous amnesiac woman who calls herself Alicja is unexpectedly reunited with her lost family. But the anarchic, free-spirited woman who arrives on their doo...

Directed by Miroslav Terzić • 2019 • Serbia

Based on true events, Miroslav Terzić’s Stitches reckons with a forgotten trauma from the time of Yugoslavia’s collapse. Ana (a remarkable Snežana Bogdanović) is a Belgrade seamstress who is haunted by the loss of her stillborn son 18 years previousl...

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 heart, this is a family drama, centred on ageing pa...

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 patriarch Gică, wife Niculina, and their nine children –...

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 celebrations gives the duo a case to investigate ...

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 years, Heavens Above explores the notion of miracles...

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 Lidija (Jasna Đuričić, the breakout star of Jasmila Žb...