Russia

  • Angela Gallardo Bernal – 10 Days In North Korea (2013)

    2011-2020Angela Gallardo BernalDocumentaryDramaRussia

    10 Days in North Korea takes the audience on a trip around Pyongyang, the focal point of power for the North Korean regime, to speak with citizens of what the filmmakers consider a very interesting “social experiment” that has been going on for about seventy years.

    The film kicks off by demonstrating the allegiance of the Pyongyang workforce – interviews with an accomplished biologist and a few factory workers convey a genuine high opinion of “Grand Marshal” Kim Jong-un and enthusiasm towards contributing to the regime’s collective productivity. The terminology used to describe the government’s control over their daily lives is they are being “protected.”Read More »

  • Andrey Zvyagintsev – Leviafan AKA Leviathan (2014)

    2011-2020Andrey ZvyagintsevDramaRussia

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    In a Russian coastal town, Nikolai is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits his old Army friend to help, but the man’s arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.Read More »

  • Yuriy Bykov – Durak AKA The Fool (2014)

    Drama2011-2020RussiaYuriy Bykov

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    Synopsis:
    The Fool is a movie about a simple plumber. He is an honest man that is up against an entire system of corrupt bureaucrats. The lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dormitory that is at risk of collapsing during the night are at stake.Read More »

  • Svetlana Proskurina – Do svidaniya mama AKA Goodbye Mom (2014)

    2011-2020DramaRussiaSvetlana Proskurina

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    Synopsis

    A story about a chance encounter that momentarily destroyed a successful and happy family life. All of a sudden the woman found passion and desire more important than her loving husband and cherished child. The father and son suffer from the realization that they are no longer needed, but try to understand and forgive. The woman, who failed to become happy, is in turmoil.Read More »

  • Ilmar Raag – Ya ne vernus AKA I Won’t Come Back (2014)

    2011-2020DramaIlmar RaagRussia

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    A young woman who grew up in orphanage is longing to be loved, but does not have it in her to love others. Her teenage looks help her while falsely accused of committing a crime to hide in a orphanage without arousing any suspicion. There, she meets a 13 years old homeless person like herself, Kristina, and together they set out on a long journey to a small town in Kazakhstan, where Kristina’s grandmother lives…Read More »

  • Mikhail Segal – Kino pro Alekseeva AKA A Film About Alekseev (2014)

    2011-2020DramaMikhail SegalRussia

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    Quote:
    Sometimes we know less about the past than about the future. Alekseev, a lonely old man, unexpectedly discovers that he has not lived the life he thought he had, and finds himself to be a completely different person.Read More »

  • Natalya Meshchaninova – Kombinat ‘Nadezhda’ AKA The Hope Factory (2014)

    2011-2020DramaNatalya MeshchaninovaRussia

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    Industrial city of Norilsk: factories, cold, chemical air. The only desire of young people living here is to leave, against all odds. A docu-style, emotionally-driven drama about a young girl desperately fighting for an escape which is so blurry, and for love which is so insecure.

    Due to its vast industrial areas and enormous industrial output, the Russian city of Norilsk has become one of the most polluted places in the world. However, despite the persistent ecological crisis, the severe northern climate and harsh living conditions, life goes on there in its own extreme, as well as routine, way. But the will to live that such an existence fosters is actually the will, or rather the dream, to escape, especially for a young generation. A desperate, hardly possible dream that moves and traps its adherents, turning against them.Read More »

  • Aleksandr Sokurov – Vostochnaya elegiya AKA Oriental Elegy (1996)

    1991-2000Aleksandr SokurovDocumentaryExperimentalRussia

    Quote:
    Oriental Elegy (1996). Visually impressionistic, atmospherically dense, and narratively opaque, Oriental Elegy is the surreal journey of a displaced spirit (Aleksandr Sokurov) as he wanders in the interminable darkness through the temporal landscape of a quaint and isolated feudal-era fishing village. Guided by a series of faintly illuminated rooms, the wandering spirit comes upon ancient souls who take on physical forms as they recount their personal stories of daily existence, loss, and tragedy in the peasant community. Intrigued by his initial visit to a curiously distracted elderly woman, the spirit returns to her home in order to ask a fundamental question – “What is happiness?” – an existential query that is innocently answered with innate humility and accepted unknowingness. Through abstractly textured imagery and indelibly hypnotic dreamscapes, Sokurov composes a metaphoric, sensual, and evocative tone poem on a soul’s search for enlightenment and the essential survival of human consciousness.Read More »

  • Timur Bekmambetov – Nochnoy Dozor AKA Night Watch (2004)

    2001-2010FantasyHorrorRussiaTimur Bekmambetov

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    Information

    Little Shop of Horrors, Russian Style

    By Oleg Liakhovich The Moscow News

    On the heels of the XXVI Moscow International Film Festival came an event even more pompous and widely publicized – the premiere of a movie meant to spark a revival of Russia’s popular cinema while giving Hollywood a battle royale on its own terms

    Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor in original Russian) depicts the on-going struggle between the magical forces of good and evil in present-day Moscow. The movie was eagerly awaited by fans and became an object of an intense advertising campaign in all media. Its US $3mln budget – an incredible sum for a local movie – and plentiful special effects, also a novelty for Russian cinema with its established traditions of inexpensive quality dramas and solid adaptations of literary classics, were to make Night Watch Russia’s equivalent of an American summer blockbuster. The producers actually went as far as officially calling it “the first Russian blockbuster” long before it had the chance to appear on screen. Even Russia’s own Oscar winner and self-styled national sage director Nikita Mikhalkov, while admitting that the film “wasn’t his thing”, said that it was “cool” and called it Russia’s “answer to Quentin Tarantino”. Serious praise indeed – after all, only a dirty mind would suspect Mikhalkov of still being sore at old Quentin for “stealing” his Palme d’Or in Cannes back in 1994.
    Lightsaber, Anyone?Read More »

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