Early films from the then Soviet Union had a shaky start due to the First World War and the October Revolution in 1917, but Lenin himself and later Stalin recognised the propaganda uses of the medium. At first, with the infrastructure in tatters and virtually no cinemas in which to screen films, shorts expounding communism were carried from place to place often accompanying live speakers. Once Moscow's first cinema was opened at the end of 1921, newsreels became common. But in 1924 Sergei Eisenstein's 'Strike' became the first true Soviet feature. The following year his 'Battleship Potemkin' was launched to great acclaim, highly propagandistic and towing the party line. Tight restrictions on content continued up until Stalin's death in 1953 and it wasn't until the '60s and '70s that seminal Russian film makers like Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergo Paradjanov and Nikita Mikhalkov began to find their own voice. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the largely state-funded film industry all but disappeared and is only now beginning to find its feet once more. A few gems found their way to Alice's shelves from this period, such as 'Burnt By The Sun' (1994), 'Prisoner of the Mountains' (1996), and our one and only Estonian film is to be found in this section, for want of a better home, the darkly humourous 'Darkness in Tallinn' (1993). 2002 saw the release of 'Russian Ark' (pictured), shot in one take, it is the longest unedited film ever made.
Based on a true story, this offbeat Russian drama concerns a mental hospital on the border of Chechnya and its assortment of eccentrics. When the arri... Read more
AKA 'My Name is Ivan'. Tarkovsky's debut feature was awarded 15 international prizes and is the haunting tale of a young boy caught up in the horrors... Read more
Before his birth in 1530, many omens were observed and many prophecies made about the child to be born to the second wife of Vasily III as he was to b... Read more
Aleksey Vertkov stars as Ivan Naydenov, a mysterious Soviet soldier discovered amidst the wreckage of a destroyed tank. Ninety percent of his body is... Read more
Aka "Kukushka". Highly-praised and upbeat anti-war drama in which two men from opposing armies - a Finnish sniper and a Russian Captain find themselve... Read more
An unusual fantasy from Russia about a group of St. Petersburg residents who find a strange 'spatial ladder' in the closet of a deceased neighbor that... Read more
Set in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in 1992. Friends Eka and Natia look to leave childhood behind as they ignore societal customs and work to escap... Read more
Aka 'Ten Days That Shook The World'. Eisenstein's famous recreation of the October Revolution during which the Bolsheviks overthrew the Kerensky gover... Read more
This devastating drama, based loosely on Tolstoy's Prisoner of the Caucsus, tells of two Russian soldiers captured by Chechen rebels and held in an im... Read more
A band of Russian soldiers fight to hold a strategic building in their devastated city against a ruthless German army, and in the process become deepl... Read more