The Village Detective: A Song Cycle

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

Rasputin: Murder in the Tsar's Court

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.

Ivan the Terrible

Ivan, first tsar of Russia. History will remember him as "the Terrible. Russian people love him for centuries. He liberates Russia from foreign oppressors, demands absolute obedience and loyalty in order to radically modernise Russia? Ivan IV, Grand Duke of Moscow, first Tsar of Russia by the grace of God. A madman? A sadist?

Moskau 1941 - Stimmen am Abgrund

Rasputin

Into an era seething with war and revolution, a man comes with an incredible power to heal a nation...or destroy it. Based on the true story of one of the most powerful and mysterious figures in Russian history.

The Gulag Archipelago: The Book That Changed Russian History

The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, which forever shook the very foundations of communist ideology.

Frenemies: Putin and Trump

Russian President Vladimir Putin was one of the first politicians to congratulate Donald Trump on his election as president of the United States in 2016, but over time the relationship between the two heads of state has had its ups and downs. Are they friends or enemies? Has their mutual admiration turned into mutual distrust?

American: The Bill Hicks Story

American: The Bill Hicks Story is a biographical documentary film on the life of comedian Bill Hicks.

Stalin and the Katyn Massacre

The Katyn massacre, carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940, was only one of many unspeakable crimes committed by Stalin's ruthless executioners over three decades. The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers was part of a relentless purge, the secrets and details of which have only recently been partially revealed.

In the Turmoil of the Russian Revolution

2017 marks the centenary of one of the most significant events of the 20th century - the Russian Revolution. Using the private journals of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the Romanov children, this film is an intimate and eye-opening account of the Russian Imperial family in those days of turmoil. How did they get through their days? How did they perceive their lives as their world crumbled around them?

Putin's Witnesses

Russian Federation, December 31, 1999. After President Boris Yeltsin's unexpected resignation, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin becomes acting president of the country. From that day and for a year, Vitaly Mansky's camera documented Putin's rise to power. The story of a privileged witness. The harsh explanation of the reason why politics is the art of possibility of achieving the best with the support of many, but also of giving the worst in return.

Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson: Life is a Novel

A two-part documentary about the fraught relationship between Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky and émigré linguist Roman Jakobson.

Life and Fate by Vassili Grossman

The convoluted and moving story of Russian writer Vassili Grossman (1905-64) and his novel Life and Fate (1980), a literary masterpiece, a monumental and epic account of life under Stalin's regime of terror, a defiant cry that the KGB tried to suffocate.

Kasparov: Chess Rebel

The extraordinary life and career of the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, a brilliant and charismatic, but also rebellious, favorite son of the Soviet Union.

Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution

Russia, 1917. After the abdication of Czar Nicholas II Romanov, the struggle for power confronts allies, enemies, factions and ideas; a ruthless battle between democracy and authoritarianism that will end with the takeover of the government by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Catherine the Great

Trapped in a loveless arranged marriage to the immature future Czar, a young German Princess proves a skillful political infighter and rises to become Catherine the Great.

Disaster at Chernobyl

The explosion at Chernobyl was ten times worse than the Hiroshima bomb and was due to a combination of human error and imperfect technology. An account of the sixty critical minutes prior to the explosion of the nuclear power plant on the night of April 26, 1986.

Tsar to Lenin

A documentary film account of the Russian Revolution, based on archival footage.

Anniversary of the Revolution

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

The Long Breakup

Ukrainian journalist Katya Soldak, currently living in New York City and working for Forbes magazine, chronicles Ukraine's history: its strong ties to Russia for centuries; how it broke away from the USSR and began to walk alone; the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution, the Crimea annexation, the Donbass War; all through the eyes of her family and friends settled in Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city located just eighteen miles from the Russian border.