Russia

A small village located on the shores of the White Sea, 2008. In Northern Russia.

While winter has shrouded everything in the glacial night of the North, a few hours of light per day seep in on the eve of Easter in the village of Soumskiy Pozad, around a thousand kilometers to the north of Saint-Petersburg, in the province of Karelia. Connected to the rest of the country by a vague muddy road and a piece of railroad, the village experiences a suspended and mysterious time. The film is about the Russia of unending forests and potato fields. A few robust and intransigent people live peacefully, in no hurry by pressing needs. Two small girls have just been adopted by a family. The woman is sweet and soft-spoken, whereas the man is hot-tempered. It is Chekov’s Russia: still happy, yet torn apart, and cold.
linkRead More »

Quote:
The bridge film between his (Sokurov’s) first decade’s essays into historicized metafilm and the subsequent, fame-making fata morganas is Days of the Eclipse(1988), a patience-testing post-apocalyptic dawdle (based on a novel by the Strugatsky brothers) that plays more like aimless third-world doc than science fiction. Concerning a young doctor stuck in the middle of a rocky wasteland (actually, Turkmenistan, though it could easily pass for any post-colonial hunk of Africa), Daysis maddeningly oblique, visually erratic, and utterly disconnective. Angels, earthquakes, talking corpses, Stalinist iconography, and visual disjunctions may figure in, but for the most part Sokurov designed the film as an elusive tissue of non-happenings and mysterious nexuses, all of it sucking the dusty air of Soviet-satellite poverty.Read More »

An ordinary hunter accidentally helps a criminal to escape from his accomplices. Two completely different men tries to reach a distant city, but the price of life will be truly terrifying.Read More »

Dariya the maid getting a boy to touch her large breast is just one incident that occurs when Yohan and Victor infiltrate two families, forcing young Liza and blind Ekaterina to appear in porn, but they are not so innocent themselves.Read More »

SYNOPSIS::::
Anti-Fascist Attitude” is the first ever documentary on the emerging Russian anti-fascist movement which is made by the activists themselves. The movie features both moderate NGO activists and radical grassroots activists and anarchists from three cities – Moscow, St. Petersburg and Irkutsk.

It also features Stanislav Markelov, murdered in Moscow on 19th January, 2009.Read More »

David Robinson, The Times of London wrote:
Frumin has [a] gift for discovering the unexpected in every shot and character, and a lifelike way of inextricably mingling farce and tragedy.

-oOo-

One of the best Russian films of the 1990s, Viva Castro! is set in a small Russian town in 1965. “At this time Fidel Castro was as important for the Russian people as Elvis Presley was for the Americans,” says the director, Boris Frumin, who returned to Russia after sixteen years of exile in America to make this film.

Young Kolya is in love with his singing teacher, but his life isn’t easy. His father skips town after stealing some coins from a museum and his mother is sent to a labor camp as punishment. When the father returns a year later, Kolya becomes involved with the pretty young woman hired to nurse him.Read More »

Passions is a 1994 romantic comedy by Russian-Ukrainian director Kira Muratova based on the novellas of Boris Dedyukhin.
Blonde Lilia and brunette Violetta are fascinated by horse racing, and the young racers are more than a little attracted to them, too. However, the worlds of sporting and romance don’t always coexist peacefully as the two girls learn the hard way through a series of touching, surreal, and sometimes heartbreaking encounters. One of the most beautifully photographed Russian films in recent years, this acclaimed modern classic was hailed at numerous film festivals including the Berlin Film Festival and Russia’s Kinotavr Festival, where it won the Jury and Critics Prizes.Read More »

Following up on his shaded character study of Adolf Hitler in Moloch, acclaimed filmmaker Alexander Sokurov directs this companion piece — the second in a planned trilogy — based on the waning days of the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Set in 1923 in the newly created U.S.S.R., state founder Lenin (Leonid Mozgovoy) — though he is never mentioned by name — is convalescing from a stroke at age 51 in his dacha. Surrounded by watchful guards, a live-in doctor, his wife, and his sister, this formerly titanic figure lives as a virtual prisoner after the deterioration of his health. Unable to make contact with the outside world — newspapers are forcibly removed and the phone lines cut — Lenin spends much of his time puttering around in the garden or eating with his loyal wife. One day, Stalin (Sergei Razhuk) pays him a visit, even though Lenin isn’t quite sure who the future tyrant is. He presents the sick man a walking stick, mentioning that he wanted it to be engraved but Trotsky vetoed the idea. After the visit, Lenin becomes upset that he is living in luxury while his countrymen are starving. This film was screened in competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie GuideRead More »

The film depicts the instincts and schemes of Faust, and the world that gives rise to his ideas.The film is the final part in a series of films where Alexander Sokurov explores the corrupting effects of power. The previous installments are three biographical dramas: about Adolf Hitler in Moloch from 1999, Vladimir Lenin in Taurus from 2001, and the Japanese emperor Hirohito in The Sun from 2005.Read More »