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Earth
Movie + 3 extras
Directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko • 1930 • USSR/Ukraine
Widely regarded as Dovzhenko’s masterpiece and one of the finest silent films ever made, Earth is fiercely poetic and politically radical. Narrating the collectivisation of agriculture in the Ukrainian countryside, Dovzhenko employs avant-gar...
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My Joy
Movie + 1 extra
Directed by Sergei Loznitsa • 2010 • Russia/Ukraine
The first Ukrainian production ever to compete for the Palme d’Or, My Joy marked the fiction debut in one of the most vital directorial careers in modern film. Sergei Loznitsa’s grimly compelling excavation of the past and future of Russian nat...
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Volcano
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Roman Bondarchuk • 2018 • Ukraine
Lukas, a translator for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is transporting some foreign colleagues across the southern Ukrainian steppe, when he becomes stranded in a ramshackle small town. Can he trust the seemingly dera...
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Stop-Zemlia
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Kateryna Gornostai • 2021 • Ukraine
A stunning addition to the canon of coming-of-age dramas, Kateryna Gornostai’s debut film is a tender and authentic portrait of teenagers in contemporary Ukraine, produced shortly before the Russian invasion. At the heart of the story is 16-year-ol...
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Getting to Know the Big Wide World
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Kira Muratova • 1978 • USSR/Russia
On a rough and tumble construction site, the conversation flows and love blooms for trio Lyuba, Misha, and Kolya. In the liminal space of their workplace, they build material and intangible connections. Kira Muratova’s signature eye for the foibles ...
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The White Bird Marked with Black
Movie + 2 extras
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 ...
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Annychka
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Borys Ivchenko • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine
A wartime melodrama shot through with the folkloric magic and vivid imagination that defined Ukraine’s so-called “poetic cinema” of the 1960s. In the dark days of Nazi occupation, a young girl native to the Carpathian mountains falls in love with ...
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Conscience
Movie + 1 extra
Directed by Volodymyr Denysenko • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine
Volodymyr Denysenko’s searing partisan drama is a neglected masterpiece of Soviet Ukrainian cinema. Recounting a partisan attack on a Nazi officer and the brutal recriminations that follow, Vasyl Zemliak’s quasi-autobiographical script draws ...
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Battleship Potemkin
Movie + 2 extras
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...
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Brief Encounters
Movie + 2 extras
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 ...
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Enthusiasm
Movie + 1 extra
Directed by Dziga Vertov • 1931 • USSR/Ukraine
A radical early sound film from the grandfather of non-fiction, Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm captures Ukraine’s Donbas in the throes of revolutionary transformation. Vertov’s vision of industrialisation in motion verges on abstract reverie, taking the ...
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The Long Farewell
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Kira Muratova • 1971 • USSR/Ukraine
Ukrainian auteur Kira Muratova’s sophomore directorial effort, The Long Farewell was shelved by censors until 1987, then heralded as a lost masterpiece. This simple tale of maternal jealousy and filial rebellion is transformed by Muratova into a th...
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Love’s Berries
Movie + 2 extras
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...
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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Movie + 3 extras
Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1965 • USSR/Ukraine
The first mature masterpiece from one of world cinema’s true poets, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors bursts with imagination. Grounded in the folk traditions, aesthetics, and dialect of the Hutsul people of western Ukraine, Parajanov’s tale of for...
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Spring on Zarechnaya Street
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Marlen Khutsiev • 1956 • USSR/Ukraine
The feature debut of beloved auteur Marlen Khutsiev, Spring on Zarechnaya Street signalled a sea change in Soviet cinema on its release in 1956. Charting the romance between a literature teacher and a happy-go-lucky factory worker in provincial U...
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The Stone Cross
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Leonid Osyka • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine
Western Ukraine in the 1890s. When elderly peasant Ivan Didukh decides to leave his Carpathian home in search of a better life in Canada, the village comes together to ceremonially mark his departure, understood as symbolic of the death of their old...