Slavic

Bitva Extrasenov (Битва Экстрасенсов), Battle of the Psychics, is a Russian-language TNT (ТНТ) TV show based on Britain’s Psychic Challenge. Running since 2007, the show reached peak popularity in November 2013 with a season dedicated to the death of Vladislav Listyev (Владислав Листев), a Soviet TV personality and journalist killed by two unknown assailants in […]

The Zolotoi Gramofon (Золотой Граммофон, lit. “Golden Gramophone”) is one of the most important music award ceremonies in Russia. It was established in 1995 by Russkoe Radio, a Moscow radio station that specializes in Russian pop music. The awards were then attached to a the Russian Hill (Русская Горка) radio show, which aired the 12 […]

Гостья из будущего (Guests From the Future) is a five-part children’s science fiction television mini-series from 1985. Based on Kir Bulychev’s popular 1978 children’s book One Hundred Years Ahead, Guests from the Future became an instant classic. Produced by the prestigious Gorky Film Studio, the show featured, for its time, convincing sets depicting the far […]

The Fryderyk is the most important annual Polish music award for the modern Polish popular music industry. It’s presented in April, and is comparable to the American Grammy award. The Fryderyk was officially created in 1994 by the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry (Związek Producentów Audio-Video, ZPAV). Presented for the first time in 1995, […]

Prisoner of the Mountains (Кавказский пленник) is a 1996 film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1872 war novella “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” Directed by Sergei Bodrov (Сергей Бодров) and starring Oleg Menshikov (Олег Меньшиков), Sergei Bodrov, Jr. (Сергей Сергеевич Бодров), Dzhemal Sikharulidze (Джемал Сихарулидзе), and Susanna Mekhralieva (Сусанна Мехралиева), the film was nominated for an Academy […]

Nashestvie (Нашествие), or “Invasion,” is an annual Russian rock music festival held over a three-day weekend in the first half of July. Since launching in 1999, Nashestvie has become one of the largest open-air music festivals in Russia with a record 205,000 in attendance during the 2016 season. The first Nashestvie was organized by Nashe […]

Tangerines (Mandariinid) is a 2013 Estonian–Georgian drama film. It’s in Russian and Estonian, despite the fact that it takes place in and was filmed in Georgia. The film is about a village in Abkhazia (considered a part of Georgia or an independent republic, depending on who you ask), whose residents are mostly ethnic Estonians. The year […]

Hitchhiking Through Belarus (Аўтаспынам па Беларусі) is a contemporary Belarusian documentary TV series. Unlike most shows that air on Belarusian television, it is actually in Belarusian, as opposed to Russian. There are about 30 episodes, most about 20 minutes long; they aired from 2013 to 2016. The show aired on Belsat, Belarus’s first independent TV station. Hitchhiking follows […]