Russia

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Two 17-year-old Moscow girls, Olya and Sasha, are going to the Crimea to meet Olya’s father Sergey. Sergey has lived in a small seaside village his whole life and has never seen his daughter. At the threshold of her father’s house, Olya gets scared of meeting him. She asks Sasha “to trade places with her”. So Sasha introduces herself as Olya and pretends to be Sergey’s daughter while Olya claims to be her best friend. Little did they know that this innocent joke will turn into great drama and change their lives forever.Read More »

IMDB:
User Review
Mockva
29 November 2005 | by severaloptions (United States)

I took the movie very seriously. Of course it is a black farce. But not only so.

I love to watch this movie. The director captured my attention and held it. The acting is extremely well-done down to the smallest gesture. The dialogue is meaningful; the silences even more so. Tatyana Drybich found her role here.Read More »

It’s just another normal Saturday in Ukraine but Valery Kabysh, a young party official, sees panic on the faces of those in charge of the Chernobyl power station where a reactor tower has exploded. As he tries to rally together the woman he loves and his friends he finds all his attempts to get out of town are thwarted by the roots that have attached each and everyone of them to the place they live and work. All the while deadly plumes of radioactive smoke are silently rising up into the atmosphere.

3 Wins, 9 NominationsRead More »

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Today the Russian philosophy known as Cosmism has been largely forgotten. Its utopian tenets – combining Western Enlightenment with Eastern philosophy, Russian Orthodox traditions with Marxism – inspired many key Soviet thinkers until they fell victim to Stalinist repression. In his three-part film project, artist Anton Vidokle probes Cosmism’s influence on the twentieth century and suggests its relevance to the present day. In Part One he returns to the foundations of Cosmist thought (This Is Cosmos, 2014). Part Two explores the links between cosmology and politics (The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun, 2015) and Part Three restages the museum as a site of resurrection, a central Cosmist idea (Immortality and Resurrection for All!, 2017).Read More »

On a frozen dark night in remote Siberia, a group of strangers travel home together in a van. When the driver refuses to stop for an elder, a darkening shadow looms over what could possibly be the most tragic night of their lives. This dramatic and thrilling feature with its poetic pacing and exquisite cinematography is easily one of Lukachevskyi’s finest works.

Winner — Best Dramatic Feature — 15th International Film Festival of Indigenous Peoples ImagineNATIVE in TorontoRead More »

Loveless (winner of the Jury Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival) is a Russian drama film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev – acclaimed director of Leviathan, and The Return.

The story concerns two separated parents who have lost their young son and attempt to find him. It was shot in Moscow, with international support after the Russian government disapproved of Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film Leviathan. Loveless opened at Cannes to critical acclaim.

In Moscow, a married couple, Zhenya and Boris, are in the midst of obtaining a divorce, with much animosity. They have a 12-year-old son, Alyosha, who witnesses the two arguing heatedly. Alyosha afterwards vanishes. Boris and Zhenya appeal to police for assistance in finding the boy, but the police reply they are too busy and tell them to find volunteers for search and rescue instead.Read More »

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Feature film about three people whose paths cross during a terrible time of war: Olga, a Russian aristocratic emigrant and member of the French Resistance; Jules, a French collaborator; and Helmut, a high-ranking German SS officer. Olga is arrested for hiding Jewish children during a raid. Her case is investigated by Jules who, attracted to her, offers to be soft on her if she’ll sleep with him. But his intentions are cut short when he is killed by Resistance fighters. Olga is put into a concentration camp where she encounters Helmut who was once madly in love with her and still harbours feelings for her. Together they embark on a twisted and destructive relationship. As the Nazis face imminent defeat, Helmut decides to save Olga and escape with her to South America. Although she initially agrees to go with him, at the last moment she changes her mind. Prepared to die for her beliefs – the idea that all lives have a purpose and that even in the direst circumstances, people are capable…Read More »

Synopsis
To tell a history through architecture and music, the film matches the styles of Moscow’s 20th- and 21st-century buildings with electronic variations of the Soviet and Russian national anthem. The juxtaposition captures an aesthetic evolution driven by the evolution of ideology.Read More »

– Sokurov directed and filmed Mozart’s Requiem for the Rossica Choir in the wonderful hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Preceded by his student film, inspired by La Traviata.

The first night of a performance of Mozart’s Requiem staged by Alexander Sokurov, with the Rossica choir from St. Petersburg, led by Valentina Kopylova-Pantchenko, took place in the small hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic at the end of the winter of 2003. The choir holds a special place in this presentation of the Requiem – it is the main actor and plays the main role. The director was looking to give a new resonance to classical music in both an aesthetic as well as a musical context. On stage, the action takes place in a clear, simple, dynamic and beautiful way, within the space of a magnificent hall. The performance was a surprising revelation even for music-lovers.Read More »