Russian Ark (Русский ковчег) is a 2002 film directed by Aleksandr Sokurov (Александр Сокуров). The film was shot in a single, 96-minute take and filmed entirely inside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. It was an entry into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. The film features an unnamed narrator who leads a character known as […]

Aurora (Аврора) is a 2006 Ukrainian drama that puts a human face on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The film is in both Russian and Ukrainian. The film takes place in the 1980s and tells the story of adolescent Aurora (played by Анастасія Зюркалова), who lives in an orphanage in Pripyat, Ukraine (Прип’ять), and dreams of […]

Shadowboxing 3: The Final Round (Бой с тенью 3: Последний раунд—the name sounds quite dramatic in Russian, but the actual meaning is less exciting) is a 2011 Russian action/drama film, the third and last in the Shadowboxing franchise. The series started with 2005’s Shadowboxing and continued with 2007’s Shadowboxing 2: Revanche (Реванш). In real life […]

Doctor Zhivago is a 1965 British–Italian romantic drama set in Russia in the years leading up to World War I and the time during World War I and the Russian Civil War. The movie was based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, which was banned in the Soviet Union due to its independent-minded stance on the October […]

Brest Fortress (Брестская крепость) is a 2010 Russian and Belorussian historical/war drama film. It is about the defense of the fortress against the Nazis, which was one of the first World War II battles that the Soviet Union took part in. The film is highly accurate to the real-life event, presenting a documentary-like look at […]

Ninth Company (9 Рота) is a 2005 Russian war film about the Soviet Union’s war with Afghanistan. The war, between the Soviets—supported by Afghan allies—and Afghan guerrilla-type soldiers, lasted from 1979 to 1989. The film takes place toward the end of this period and is based on a true story, that of the “battle at […]

Silent Souls (Овсянки; the actual translation is “Buntings,” referring to a type of bird) is a 2010 Russian drama, one of the recent crop of artistic, internationally recognized independent Russian cinema. It is based on the short story of the same name by Denis Osokin (Денис Осокин). Osokin has published quite a lot of poetry […]

The Turkish Gambit (Турецкий гамбит) is a 2005 Russian historical spy film directed by Dzhanik Fayziev (Джаник Файзиев). The film is based loosely on Boris Akunin’s (Борис Акунин) novel of the same name. The film is set in Bulgaria in 1876, during the Russo-Turkish war. The story begins when titular councilor Fandorin’s (Yegor Beroev/Егор Бероев) […]

Tulpan (Тюльпан) is an award-winning 2008 comedy-drama by Kazakh director Sergey Dvortsevoy (Сергей Дворцевой). The film was Kazakhstan’s official submission to the 2009 Academy Awards’ Foreign Language Film category. It also won Best Film at the second annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards that same year, as well as a Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2008 […]