August Eighth (Август. Восьмого) is a Russian film released in 2012. The film tells the story of one family affected by the 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia, a contested territory between the two countries. Life is going along normally for Ksenia, a divorced woman who lives in Moscow, when one day […]
Spy (Шпион) is a Russian film released in 2012. It is based on the novel Spy Novel (Шпионский роман) by well-known Russian novelist Boris Akunin. Akunin contributed to the film’s screenplay. The film takes place in 1941, shortly before the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Nazi agents are trying to convince the Russian leadership that […]
DukhLess 2 (ДухLess 2; “Soulless 2”) is a Russian drama released in 2015, the sequel to 2012’s popular DukhLess. Sergey Minaev, the author of the book that the first DukhLess was based on, contributed to the screenplay. In the film, Max has totally changed his life and given up the high-paying career he had at […]
DukhLess (ДухLess; “Soulless”) is a Russian psychological drama released in 2012. It is based on the novel Soulless: Story of an Unreal Person (Дyxless. Повесть о ненастоящем человеке) by Sergey Minaev. The book was widely read in Russia and internationally, and producer Pyotr Anurov was interested early on in turning it into a film. The […]
Stalingrad (Сталинград) is a Russian film released in 2013. It takes place during the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the decisive battles of World War II. The battle, which was between the Soviet Union and Germany and took place from August 1942 to February 1943, resulted in almost two million casualties and was one of […]
Viy (Вий) is the 2014 adaptation of the Soviet Russian horror film from 1967. The original film was in turn loosely based on the short story of the same name by Nikolai Gogol, published in 1835. The new film was released as Forbidden Empire in some English-speaking countries. The film takes place at the start […]
VIA Gra (ВИА Гра; also called Nu Virgos) is a Ukrainian, Russian-singing pop group founded by businessman Dmitry Kostyuk in 2000 in Kyiv. The name of the band is usually assumed to refer to the drug Viagra, with the “Via” hidden in the Russian acronym for “vocal-instrumental ensemble,” which is found in many band names. […]
Propaganda (Пропаганда) is a Russian band that’s been releasing hits consistently since 2001. They have been highly successful with their brand of dance pop, with songs like “With Chalk” (“Мелом”), “Who” (“Кто”), and “No One” (“Никто”) leading Russian charts as soon as they appeared. The group was founded in 2001 by producer Sergey Izotov. Its […]
Eva Pol’na (Ева Леонидовна Польна) is a Russian singer and songwriter from St. Petersburg. Pol’na started singing and dancing when she was young, but did not start to focus on music until later. She got a degree in library science and information management and afterward attended art school in St. Petersburg. Her music career started […]
Vladimir Presnyakov (Владимир Пресняков) is a Russian singer from Yekaterinburg. He was exposed to music from a young age, since both of his parents were in the music industry. Presnyakov started playing around with the piano, guitar, and drums as a child, and started writing his own music when he was 11. He began singing […]
Tatyana Bulanova (Татьяна Буланова) is a Russian singer from St. Petersburg. Growing up, Bulanova studied the piano in music school, and also began to play the guitar in her teens. For college, she originally enrolled in the library sciences department of the Leningrad Institute of Culture, but she soon moved to the vocal music department. […]
Shahzoda (Шахзода; real name Zilola Bahodirovna Musayeva, as it is spelled in Uzbek) is an Uzbek singer and actress. Shahzoda grew up in Fergana, in the Uzbek SSR. She was interested in music from her childhood, but has no musical education—she studied management at the International State University of Kyiv, but left the university to […]
