Barber of Siberia

In Russian with English subtitles

The film takes place during the rule of Alexander III. McCracken and Jane, disguised as his daughter, try to blackmail the Commission on Technical Innovations. Jane’s Moscow target is to be the head of the cadet school, General Radlov who is also Chairman of the Commission. However, the General falls for her, while she, on the other hand, prefers Andrey who responds to her with passion. The showdown takes place… during a student production of “The Barber of Seville”. Andrey attacks Radlov directly from the stage. Unfortunately for Andrey, the performance is attended by the Grand Duke...

A black BMW hurtles through the night streets of Moscow, chased. A chain of events with showdowns and shootouts has brought four men, four friends outside the law, together. In a life without rules, they have no way back, and the black "Bimmer", powerful and reliable, carries them ever further from Moscow, into the wild and merciless isolation of the Russian hinterlands... There are roads that shouldn't be traveled...

3

Brother

1998

In Russian, with English subtitles

4

Brother 2

2000

In Russian, with NO subtitles

Danila goes to his older brother to start a new life in Petersburg. His brother is a gangster and a killer, and he puts Danila into this criminal world asking him to kill someone.

The second installment in the Brat /Brother/ series is glitzier and the guns are bigger, as is the body count. Danila Bagrov goes after the killers of his war-time friend.

5

Burnt By the Sun

1995

In Russian with English subtitles

6

Commissar

1967

In Russian, English, and French,

with subtitles in English

The year is 1936, and Stalin's purges are in full swing. Despite his reputation and revolutionary record, Sergei Kotov seems to be on the dictator's hit list, as indicated by the insulting arrival of his wife's former lover, an agent of government police. The director ingeniously understates the mounting threat until one begins to realize that the Kotovs are only geographically distant from the long, bloody reach of Stalin, and this is indeed the last happy season in the life of the Bolshevik hero's family. By the time we do realize it, the shock of change is almost unbearable.. --Tom Keogh

A female commissar named Vavilova is expecting a baby... Staying with the Jewish family of a petty artisan, who has many children of his own, and observing the everyday life of those poor but always ready to help people, Vavilova discovers a new world of human joys, the happy pleasures of motherhood and family life. But soon she has to return to the realities of war and leave her newborn son with her new friends...

7

Daywatch

2006

In Russian, with Russian subtitles

8

Doctor Zhivago

2003

In English with English subtitles

This time the World happens to be on the threshold of war between the Dark and Light Powers... The Inquisitor steps into the limelight.  It means that stakes are very high now and all the participants are only pawns in the big game.

This British mini-series is based on Boris Pasternak's novel of a Russian physician-poet whose comfortable life is upended by the Revolution. The torment of Zhivago as he must choose between his well-bred childhood sweetheart and the tragically beautiful Lara (Keira Knightley, from Pirates of the Caribbean) remains compelling.

Dr. Zhivago

This is the story as told on Russian T.V.

Shortly after the war, Alexei, his wife, Marie, and their son travel to Russia from France to make a new life for themselves. But the situation in Russia gets sticky and they can't leave. Sacha is a young athlete who lives in the same overcrowded apartment complex. Like Marie,he wants to escape, and the two of them grow close as Marie and Alexei grow apart.  But one of these characters is harboring a secret that won't be revealed until the end.

11

Eralash

In Russian, with NO subtitles

12

Heart of a Dog

1988

In Russian and English, with Russian

and English subtitles

Popular children's series.

This tale is about a doctor who transforms a dog into a man with darkly amusing consequences.  Meanwhile, you see the soviet system closing in around Dr. Preobrazhensky, who has no time for it as he tries to keep his foul-mouthed new creation reined in.   Review by James Ferguson (www.amazon.com)

13

The Irony of Fate, or “Enjoy Your Bath”

1975

 In Russian with English subtitles

14

The Irony of Fate 2 / Ironya Sudby. Prodolzhenie

2007

 In Russian with English subtitles

An unforgettable New Year's Eve provides the backdrop as four friends embark on their annual get-together at a local bathing house, where too much steam and plentiful vodka result in hilarious and charming consequences. Two men pass out, another winds up in the wrong city, and the women in their lives are left scratching their heads as midnight rapidly approaches in this wintry, scenic delight!

It's been thirty years since the New Year's Eve when Zhenya met his Nadya. Time hasn't been kind to them:  they’ve broken up. But old friends, still faithful to the tradition of going to the sauna every year, are joined by Kostya - Zhenya's son from his latest marriage - and persuade him to create a New Year's Eve miracle for his father by traveling to... St. Petersburg! But their cunning plan is disrupted by Nadya’s daughter.  She lives there and on this very day her fiancé is planning to propose…

15

The Italian

2005

 In Russian with English subtitles

16

Ivan Vasilievich - Back to the Future

1973

 In Russian, with English subtitles

Winner of the Academy Award(R) and Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film, this irresistible comedy treat was embraced by critics and audiences everywhere! A confirmed Czech bachelor is in for the surprise of his life when a get-rich-quick scheme backfires ... setting off a wild set of circumstances -- and leaving him with a pint-sized new roommate! Now, with a mischievous Russian five-year-old named Kolya suddenly in his care ... life in this once carefree playboy's tiny apartment changes faster than he could ever imagine!

Shurik Timofeev builds a working model of a time machine. By accident, Ivan Bunsha, an apartment complex manager, and George Miloslavsky, a petty burglar, are transferred to the 16th century Moscow, while Tsar Ivan the Terrible goes into the year 1973.

In Czech with English subtitles

In Russian, with English subtitles

For most Russian orphans the chance to be adopted is a dream come true. But six-year-old Vanya Solntsev has other hopes. After discovering his mother is still alive the abandoned boy teaches himself to read so as to learn her address from his personal files. Before a wealthy Italian couple can claim him for their

own Vanya sets off on a perilous journey to find his only remaining family. Pursued by orphanage staff and the police the determined runaway must now face the most difficult challenges of his young life in this incredible story inspired by true events.

This satire on life under Stalin begins with two story lines: the Devil and his retinue show up to make mischief in 1930's Moscow while Matthew the Evangelist attempts to uncover the truth about the Crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem in A. D. 33. Later, a third story line emerges, set in Moscow, in which the love-stricken Margarita bargains with the Devil to be reunited with her lover, the Master, a tormented writer-hero who pines away in an insane asylum.

19

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

1979

In Russian with English subtitles

20

Nightwatch

2004

In Russian, English, Spanish, and French,

with English Spanish and French subtitles

“This captivating love story starts with a young woman, Katya, reporting to her Worker's Dormitory friends that she has flunked by two points the exam to get into university. It ends with the most incredible sweetness of life.
The Moscow we see that does not believe in tears does believe in love, and it is not a Moscow of politics…”  -- Dennis Littrell

A fantasy-thriller set in present-day Moscow where the respective forces that control daytime and nighttime do battle.

In Russian with English subtitles

Winner of 5 Nika Awards (Russian Oscars) including Best Film. Somewhere in Northern Russia in a small Russian Orthodox monastery lives a very unusual man. His fellow-monks are confused by his bizarre conduct. Those who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future. However, he considers himself unworthy because of a sin he committed in his youth. The film is a parable, combining the realities of Russian everyday life with monastic ritual and routine.

Set high in the imposing, isolated Caucasus mountains, where the 20th century meets ancient lifestyles, Sergei Bodrov's drama of the Chechyn war finds two opposing cultures locked in conflict for so long that the reasons seem moot. Young Russian grunt Vanya and his jaded veteran Sergeant survive an ambush by Chechyn guerrillas and wind up hostages of a village elder, a war-weary widower who has lost almost everything to fighting and wants merely to swap them for his POW son. --Sean Axmaker

23

The Return

2003

In Russian with English subtitles

24

Russian Ark

(The Masterworks Edition)

2002

In Russian with English subtitles

A pair of brothers, young Ivan and the teen-age Andrey live peacefully in a fatherless household in a brackish backwater of what used to be the Soviet Union. In the midst of an idle summer, their father turns up from nowhere and tries to reëstablish his authority. Andrey responds well to such tyranny, while Ivan, a mother's boy, glowers at the treacherous interloper. Most of the film takes place on a fishing trip, which ripples with threat and thrill alike; we know that it cannot end well for father and sons, but we hardly dare to wonder what form the calamity will take. --Anthony Lane Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Russian master Alexander Sokurov has tapped into the very flow of history itself for this flabbergasting film by using a single, unbroken, 90-minute shot to wind his way through the Hermitage in St. Petersburg--the repository of Russian art and the former home to royalty. Gliding through time, we glimpse Catherine II, modern-day museumgoers, and the doomed family of Nicholas II. History collapses on itself, as the opulence of the past and the horrors of the 20th century collide, and each door that opens onto yet another breathtaking gallery is another century to be heard from. --Robert Horton

25

Siberiade

1979

In Russian with English subtitles

26

The Thief

1998

In Russian with English subtitles

This ambitious 1979 Russian film attempts no less a feat than the encapsulation of the tumultuous history of Russia in the 20th century. The film weaves an engrossing tale of three generations of two Russian families in the remote region of Siberia, each trying in their own way to find fulfillment in their lives as they seek to reconcile themselves with the ever-changing landscape of their homeland. --Robert Lane

A widowed mother in 1952 Russia takes up with a handsome army captain she met on a train, but the officer is actually a thief in disguise, often cruel and despotic.  The mother, in love despite herself, and the 6-year-old Sanya, are stuck with relocating whenever their thief-protector's safety becomes chancy. The story is told in voiceover years later by the boy, a romantic tale of challenged innocence as revisited by experience. --Jim Gay

27

Vassilisa the Beautiful

1939

In Russian, with subtitles in English, Russian, etc.

28

White Sun of the Desert

1973

In Russian, English, French and Arabic, with English, subtitles

This film is based on a popular Russian folk tale. There once lived a father who had three sons. His two elder sons, Anton and Agafon, had chosen themselves regular girls for brides, but the youngest one, Ivanushka, brought to his home a frog from the marshes. However, the frog was actually a beautiful girl, Vassilisa, over whom Gorynych the Serpent had cast a spell.  Ivanushka has to overcome many obstacles to return Vassilisa to her true form.

A soldier of the Red Army named Sukhov has been fighting in the Russian Civil War in Russian Asia for many years. Just as he is about to return home to his wife, Sukhov is chosen to guard and protect the harem of a guerilla leader (Abdulla).   Abdulla is wanted by the Red Army and left his harem behind because the women hindered him.  Sukhov's task proves to be more difficult than he imagined...

29

Window to Paris

1995

In Russian with English subtitles

Nicely set in St. Petersburg in the early 90s, when the Soviet Union has just collapsed, it depicts how life really was during those first few hard years - the transition from socialism to capitalism.  When the people in a communal apartment find a window into Paris, the window becomes their opportunity to see the world. They take that opportunity..... – Palal

30

The Diamond Arm

2002

In Russian, French, and English, with subtitles in English, Russian, etc.

31

The Way I Spent the End of the World

2006

In Romanian, with English subtitles

One of the most beloved Russian comedies, this eccentric farce from celebrated director Leonid Gaidai (based on a newspaper article) concerns a criminal operation which smuggles gold and diamonds inside a plaster arm cast. Modest economist Semyon Gorbunkov and a swindler named The Count embark on a wild series of smuggling adventures, peppered with comic dialogue which spawned several popular catchphrases.

Bucharest 1989 - last year of Ceausescu's dictatorship. Eva, 17, lives with her parents and her 7 year-old brother Lalalilu. One day at school, Eva and her boyfriend accidentally break a bust of Ceausescu. They are forced to confess their crime before a disciplinary committee. Eva is expelled from school and transferred to a reformatory establishment. There she meets Andrei and decides to escape Romania with him. Lalalilu is more and more convinced that Ceausescu is the main reason for Eva's decision to leave. So, with his friends from school, he devises a plan to kill the dictator.

32

Cinderella

1947

In Russian, NO subtitles

33

The Little Mermaid

1976

In Russian, English, and French, with English etc. subtitles

Fine, gentle, kind, naive film, full of lasting charm. Funny and sad. It is the real fairy tale loved by spectators of many generations. And Cinderella has forever accepted the image of charming Yanina Zhejmo.

The film is dedicated to the memory of the great Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen and is based upon one of his best fairy tales. A little Mermaid fell in love with a Prince whom she once had saved during a storm. For the sake of her love she sacrificed many things: she fearlessly left her home, striking a deal with an evil sorceress. Using all kinds of magical incantations in exchange for the Mermaids beautiful voice, the witch had replaced the fish tail by human legs, making it possible for the Mermaid to walk and live on earth. The Little Mermaid had gone through all these trials only to be near her beloved. But the Prince, not realizing how lucky he is, loses her forever.

34

90 New Songs of the Year

2008

In Russian, NO subtitles

35

The Snow Queen

1966

In Russian, English, and French, with English etc. subtitles

450 minutes of musical entertainment.

The film is based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The original script is by the well-known Russian writer Yevgheny Schwartz.This is a touching story of great love, human kindness and faithfulness to one’s duty.
The film fairy tale tells about the wonderful journey of a modest little girl, Herda. She is looking for her friend, Kai, who was kidnapped by a powerful wicked fairy, the Snow Queen, and taken to her kingdom. Travelling in search of her dear friend, Herda finds herself in the castle of a sly and treacherous, though funny, king, gets acquainted with forest robbers. The girl is to meet many obstacles on her way before she faces a decisive battle with the Snow Queen.

36

Franz and Polina

2006

In Russian, English subtitles.

37

Vodka Lemon

2006

In Russian, English subtitles.