Hopeful Notes

A young violinist with leukemia brings hope and life into a desolate Russian hospital for children. This film aims to raise awareness and funds to end childhood cancer, and is part of the project Let's Make a Difference.

Lenin and the Other Story of the Russian Revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, is remembered as the instigator of the October Revolution of 1917 and, therefore, as one of the men who changed the shape of the world at that time and forever, but perhaps the actual events happened in a way different from that narrated in the history books…

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Putin's Obsession: The Fight For Ukraine

A profile of Putin, exploring his complicated relationship with Ukraine. Why does this neighbouring nation threaten his power and identity?

Onnellinen mies

A portrait of the great theatre actor Evgeniy Lebedev.

Papochka

Dounia, a young woman who travels to Russia to bid a final farewell to her sick father, arrives to find her stepmother informing her that it's too late, yet she stays for the funeral and discovers she has a half-brother.

F@ck This Job

In 2008, Natasha, a newly rich woman, decides to open an independent TV station in Russia and builds an open-minded team of outcasts. By 2020, Natasha has lost everything to Russia's war between Propaganda and Truth.

Iron Butterflies

This lesson in political revelation focuses on the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. A meticulous, investigative exposé that lays bare the mechanisms of Russian warfare.

Stalin

The life and career of the brutal Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin. Through the eyes and memories of Anna Aliluyeva, Stalin’s granddaughter, the film traces the rise of the Bolshevik tyrant from Lenin’s return from exile to his brutal struggle with Trotsky, the creation of his feared secret police and the merciless inner workings of his regime. As Anna recounts her grandfather’s life, viewers gain an intimate, personal perspective on the paranoia and purges that left even his closest circles living in constant fear.

Libelu: Down With The Dictatorship

In the 1970s, they were championing the fight against Brazil’s military dictatorship. Forty years later, what’s left of Libelu? What does adult life have in store for you after the revolutionary youth?

Alexeï Guerman, cinéaste bien interdit

This film was broadcast on La Sept in October 1990 as a part of Hélène Mochiri's Cinéma de poche program devoted to Soviet cinema. The documentary was produced in-house at La Sept and based on an exclusive interview with Alexei Guerman in May of that year. It has not been seen since.

Fail Safe

Cold War tensions climb to a fever pitch when a U.S. bomber is accidentally ordered to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow.

Borderless

Following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Denys is forced to leave his country. He has nothing left but the hope of seeing Dmitrii, a young recruit of the Russian army.

Soviet Bus Stops

“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.

Anton Chekhov's The Duel

Set in a seaside resort in the Caucasus, the story centers on n'er do well, Laevsky and his illicit relationship with his mistress Nadya. Laevsky has convinced Nadya to leave her husband for him, but now wants to abandon her.

The Brothers Karamazov

Ryevsk, Russia, 1870. Tensions abound in the Karamazov family. Fyodor is a wealthy libertine who holds his purse strings tightly. His four grown sons include Dmitri, the eldest, an elegant officer, always broke and at odds with his father, betrothed to Katya, herself lovely and rich. The other brothers include a sterile aesthete, a factotum who is a bastard, and a monk. Family tensions erupt when Dmitri falls in love with one of his father's mistresses, the coquette Grushenka. Two brothers see Dmitri's jealousy of their father as an opportunity to inherit sooner. Acts of violence lead to the story's conclusion: trials of honor, conscience, forgiveness, and redemption.

The Music of Life

Eldar Ryazanov reads his poetry. An introspective movie on his multifaceted work.

The dream of the absurd man

An absurd man, feeling hopeless, decides to end his life. The night before, he dreams of a perfect world with no pain. In this dream, he sees how good people can be and how he can change. When he wakes up, he understands he must choose between giving up and finding hope. He realizes that even a silly dream can bring big changes.

The Real Russia

Ever since Russia won the 2018 World Cup bid it has been surrounded by controversy regarding hooligans, racism, homophobia, and corruption. We went to Russia to find out for ourselves if these worries are justified, what the levels of expectations are and what type of World Cup Russia will host.

Tetris

In 1988, American video game salesman Henk Rogers discovers the video game Tetris. When he sets out to bring the game to the world, he enters a dangerous web of lies and corruption behind the Iron Curtain.

Incidente a Vichy

Fire With Fire

“We never know how high we are till we are called to rise” could be the motto of this stunningly filmed, high impact and suspenseful motion picture that is based on a true story. Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu is a teenage hawker who is drawn into the liberation movement to fight against an oppressive apartheid South African government. When he and his comrades are accosted by police while on a mission he is charged with two counts of murder. He is in a fight for his life and must prove his innocence.

Welcome in Vienna

Freddy, a Viennese Jew who emigrated to New York after Hitler's invasion, and Adler, a left-wing intellectual originally from Berlin, return to Austria in 1944 as soldiers in the U.S. Army. Freddy falls in love with the daughter of a Nazi, and Adler attempts to go over to the Communist Zone. But with the advent of the Cold War and continuing anti-semitism, the idealism of both characters is shattered as they find themselves surrounded by cynicism, opportunism, and universal self-deception.

The Necrotic

The psychopathic M.D. murders his unfaithful wife and meddling sister, then goes on to further vengeance with his female patients, injecting them with lethal doses of Curare.

Merry Go Round of 1938

Two screwy characters travel to Hollywood and cause mischief.

The Hidden Half

An official is sent from his home in Tehran to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death, a political prisoner. The official's wife of nearly 20 years, Fereshteh Samimi, writes him a letter to read when he reaches the hotel - the story of her student days during the revolution of 1978. We see the story in flashbacks as he reads: she leaves her province on scholarship, joins a Communist youth group, avoids arrest, and comes under the sway of a suave older man, Roozbeh Javid, a literary-magazine editor. As she tells her husband about the hidden half of her life, Fereshteh asks that he listen to the woman facing execution, a woman and therefore one of Iran's hidden half.

V/H/S - early new years eve

A Long Way Home

A Long Way Home takes us on a fascinating journey into both the grim days of recent Chinese history and the dazzling cultural scene in present-day China. The film centers around five of the most significant representatives of contemporary Chinese counterculture: the visual artists the Gao Brothers, the choreographer and dancer Wen Hui, the animation artist Pi San and the poet Ye Fu. With bravery and subversive wit, they each shed light on the social problems in their country. In doing so, the film poses universal questions that ultimately concern us all: which values determine our cultural identity and in what kind of world do we want to live.

Object: Alimony

Ruth Butler, a clerk in an emporium, marries Jimmy Rutledge and thereby greatly displeases his mother, the owner of the emporium, because of Ruth's lowly origins. Renaud Graham, one of Mrs. Rutledge's friends, becomes interested in Ruth, forces his way into her apartment, and attempts to make violent love to her. Jimmy walks in on their embrace and, suspecting the worst, leaves Ruth. In the family way, Ruth finds refuge in a boardinghouse where she meets Al Bryant, an aspiring writer. Ruth tells Al her life story, and he makes it into a bestselling novel and then into a play. Jimmy sees the play and comes to his senses, winning Ruth's forgiveness.

Red Fish

A mysterious turn of events leads a woman into unknown territory.

I, Dalio

The great French actor, Marcel Dalio, who has the lead role in Jean Renoir's THE RULES OF THE GAME, also appears in Renoir's GRAND ILLUSION. In both films he plays a character who is Jewish, as Dalio was in real life. In fact, in most of the French films he's in the 1930s, he almost always plays shady characters, informers, blackmailers and gangsters. In other words, he is always "the Jew." When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, he fled to America and appeared in CASABLANCA and TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. In America, he was no longer the Jew but The Frenchman. He became, in dozens of films, America's idea of a typical Frenchman. His film career has these two strands in which he has two different identities. Are you defined by other people and their perceptions of who you are? Are you always a creation of the way people want to see you? Or can you exist outside of the arbitrary boundaries which are placed on you?

John Cena's Greatest Rivalries

Reliving all of John Cena's classic feuds, from his early confrontations with Eddie Guerrero and Chris Jericho to career-defining battles with Shawn Michaels, JBL, Triple H, Batista, Randy Orton, CM Punk and The Rock.

El mata ratas

Black Venus

Spanish actor Jose Antonio Ceinos stars as a down-and-out sculptor, whose inspiration returns with the strange appearance of a beautiful, mysterious black muse.

Fray Dollar

The branch of a bank in a small town is in bankruptcy. To regain the trust of the people, they offer the town's priest the position of Bank Manager, who in turn, begins to carry out all kinds of loans and social aid to the people.

Thamizh

Thamizh, a brave youth, looks forward to working with his brother in Kuwait. Meanwhile, circumstances force him to clash with some gangsters which earn him Periyavar's wrath.

20 Funerals

After a fellow Officer's funeral, 4 Cops decide that the only way to get rid of the criminal element is to stop arresting the criminals, and start burying them.

Hello...?

"a colorful poem of the first copy-motion film... the system registers images directly from a color (xerox) duplicator model 6500... an original, versatil, unique system developed by Darino" –Back Stage