The Ascent

The Ascent 1977

7.90

Two Soviet partisans leave their starving band to get supplies from a nearby farm. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.

1977

Ivan's Childhood

Ivan's Childhood 1962

7.80

In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.

1962

Siberiade

Siberiade 1979

7.20

The story about a very small god-forgotten village in Siberia reflects the history of Russia from the beginning of the century till the early 1980s. Three generations try to find the land of happiness and to give it to the people. One builds the road through taiga to the star over horizon, the second 'build communism' and the third searches for oil.

1979

Days of Eclipse

Days of Eclipse 1988

5.90

This bleak late soviet-era drama follows the career of Malyanov, a young medical school graduate who has been sent to work in Turkmenia. Here he runs into a hodge-podge of people of differing ethnicities, all of them victims of the government's earlier mania for relocating and eliminating whole ethnic groups and classes of people. These desperately unhappy people are unable to find any pleasure in this diverse companionship, but instead are antagonistic to it, and often resort to desperate measures in their doomed attempts to ease their pain.

1988

A Visitor to a Museum

A Visitor to a Museum 1989

6.77

It is the future, the world is in ruins and a large portion of the population consists of deformed mutants living in reservations. In this world a man decides to spend his vacation visiting the ruins of a museum that is now buried under the sea.

1989

Save and Protect

Save and Protect 1990

5.00

Inspired by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Sokurov’s Save and Protect recalls the most crucial events of Emma’s decline and fall: affairs with the aristocratic Rodolphe and the student Leon, the humiliation that follows her husband’s botching of the operation on the stable boy’s clubfoot. The universality of the theme of eternal struggle between the soul and the flesh is conveyed through the absence of specific reference to time or place: although the film seems to begin in 1840, its surreal mode effortlessly accommodates an automobile and the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” on an off-screen radio. Focusing on passion from a woman’s perspective and downplaying plot, Sokurov explores his subject in exquisite detail, capturing not only the heat of passion but also the quiet moments before and after and the innocent sensuousness of the body.

1990

Larisa

Larisa 1980

6.10

Elem Klimov's documentary ode to his wife, director Larisa Shepitko, who was killed in an auto wreck.

1980

Parade of the Planets

Parade of the Planets 1984

5.80

A rare astronomical phenomenon — the parade of planets — has a strange effect on several men. The heroes of the film — an astrophysicist, locksmith, salesman, architect, loader, trolley bus driver — are called up for military training, which ends ahead of time. There is a strange pause in their life — no one knows where they are, no one is waiting for them, and they themselves can not rush anywhere. This short respite in a hasty and busy life gives the heroes the opportunity to experience strong and very important feelings for them.

1984

Facing the Judgement of History

Facing the Judgement of History 1965

5.60

Director Fridrikh Ermler brings together monarchist Vasiliy Shulgin with a nameless historian who accompanies the right wing politician on a stroll through Leningrad, confronting him with his past.

1965

Plumbum, or The Dangerous Game

Plumbum, or The Dangerous Game 1987

6.00

Fifteen year old gifted teenager Ruslan Chutko longs to do good and help the police to identify offenses under the pseudonym Plumbum. Plumbum decides in a single provincial town to eradicate the evil. However, in his interest of being a fighter against evil he goes far beyond what is permitted in a children's play and ends up ruthlessly invading people's lives.

1987

Plead Guilty

Plead Guilty 1983

1

Criminal Investigation Officer Sergei Voronin takes his position by vocation. He created a club of young friends of the police, in which the guys go in for sports and meet interesting people. But he is worried about the company of guys who fell under the influence of a cynical high school student Nikolai Boyko, who "confuses robbery with prank."

1983

A Fox Hunt

A Fox Hunt 1980

4.75

A provincial Soviet town. Factory worker Victor Belov is beaten up by two teenagers in the park. One of them, Vladimir Belikov, goes to a correction labor settlement for two years, the other is put on probation. Belov goes on with his life and work. Life is simple and unambiguous: the factory, the wife, regular factory sports competitions. But the memories of the trial keep coming back. Everything was not done as properly as it had seemed then. He wants to change the fate of the accused, goes to the labor camp, obtains the right to visit him there and advocates his early release…

1980