Slavic

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 […]

Aygul Barieva (Айгуль Бариева in Russian) is a renowned Tatar singer who’s been performing now for more than 20 years. She’s a Distinguished Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, among many other awards. Most of her repertoire is in the Tatar language, though she occasionally performs in Russian as well. Barieva is from Kazan, the capital of […]

History of Kyrgyzstan (История Кыргызстана) is a series of cartoons telling the history of Kyrgyzstan. (I’m sure you didn’t see that one coming!) It was created in 2017. The series will ultimately consist of 20 several-minutes-long episodes, though to date (May 2017) only 11 have been released. The series’s creators have said that they are currently working […]

The Return (Хайтарма / Qaytarma) is a 2013 Crimean-Tatar (not to be confused with simply Tatar!) dramatic film. It was produced in Ukraine and is in both Russian and Crimean Tatar languages. The film tells the story of the events of May 1944, when over the course of a few days Stalin had the Crimean Tatars […]

We’ll Be Belarusians! (Будзьма беларусамі!) is a short animated Belarusian film. Created in 2011, it’s about five minutes long. It’s the first Belarusian-language cartoon about Belarus’s history. For such a short film, Belarusians has a big plot, and made a big impact. The film tells the story of the entire history of Belarus, from the beginning […]