The 40 most popular 1990s russian movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Bringing Up Cruelty in Women and Dogs
1992 · 2h 16m
country: Russia
A single woman's and her dog's personalities are affected by tough life circumstances.


Anna Karenina
1997 · 1h 48m
country: Russia
In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.


Mute Witness
1995 · 1h 35m
country: Germany
When a mute makeup/special effects artist working on a low-budget slasher film gets locked in a dilapidated Moscow movie studio late one night, she thinks she witnesses the making of a snuff film. Thus begins a night of terror.


The Green Elephant
1999 · 1h 27m
country: Russia
Two Russian prisoners are abused mentally and physically.


The Barber of Siberia
1998 · 3h
country: France
Douglas is a foreign entrepreneur, who ventures to Russia in 1885 with dreams of selling a new, experimental steam-driven timber harvester in the wilds of Siberia. Jane is his assistant. On her travels, she meets two men who would change her life forever: a handsome young cadet Andrej Tolstoy with whom she shares a fondness for opera, and the powerful General Radlov who is entranced by her beauty and wants to marry her.


Secrets Shared with a Stranger
1996 · 1h 32m
country: Italy
In Russia, in 1907, a rich lenient husband of a loose unfaithful woman is brutally murdered. She and her two lovers are suspects, but what about the stranger she met just before the murder? With no friends left, she and the stranger bond.


The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment
1999 · 1h 35m
country: Russia
A very typical post-Soviet era storyline. A bunch of vagabonds lured an innocent teenage girl to their apartment, offered her a drink, intimidated, then gang raped her. Local cops are incapable to undertake an adequate actions against the scoundrels - prevented by the superior chief of the local police, who is the dad of one of the scumbags. The case is closed. The girl's granddad tired of an endless circumlocution decides to take revenge in his own hands.


Dark Waters
1993 · 1h 34m
country: Italy
After the death of her father, a young woman travels to a remote convent on an island in the Black Sea to find out why her father funded it for years.


Brother
1997 · 1h 36m
country: Russia
Danila goes to his successful brother, Victor, in Petersburg to start a new life. Unknown to Danila, Victor is a contract killer, but is in hiding after asking for too much money to assassinate a Chechen mob boss. To avoid exposure, Victor convinces Danila to kill the boss instead.


Without Justice
1993 · 1h 30m
country: Russia
A mother and daughter were brutally murdered in their apartment on Saturday morning. The killer treated the latter cruelly — her face was disfigured beyond recognition. The missing item — an ancient cross with black pearls — was found at one of the acquaintances of the murdered woman. He was hastily tried and sentenced to capital punishment...


The Price of Head
1992 · 1h 28m
country: Ukraine
Commissioner Maigret's new case. At the rate of his further service in the police.


Wandering Sagittarius
1993 · 1h 36m
country: Russia
After discovering a time tunnel to 1960-ies a journalist decides to make some cash out of it.


Racket
1992
country: Russia
No overview available


Pharaoh
1998 · 10m
country: Russia
The ancient frescoes of the Egyptian city come to life. A story about the relationship between a man and a woman in a humorous, erotic, philosophical and artistic way.


Happy Birthday!
1998 · 1h 9m
country: Russia
Blending dramatic situations with a documentary-influenced visual style, Happy Birthday looks in at a typical day in a Russian maternity hospital. The patients range from a middle aged woman pleased if surprised by her current pregnancy to a Muslim woman whose marriage to a Russian has blighted her relationship with her family. No matter what their situations, the women draw strength and support from each other as they share their common experience.


Above the Lake
1995 · 10m
country: Russia
Avant-garde homage to pre-revolution Russian silent movies, and to the poet Aleksandr Blok.


The Thief
1997 · 1h 36m
country: Russia
Katya and her 6-year-old son Sanya, who, in 1952, meet a veteran Soviet officer named Tolyan. Katya falls in love with Tolyan, who turns out to be a small time criminal, but who also becomes a father figure to Sanya ...


Cursed Ground
1996 · 54m
country: Russia
A young couple encounters supernatural terror in their new home.


Alaska, Sir!
1992 · 1h 40m
country: Russia
The action takes place in Lwów (L'viv) on the eve of World War II. A former White Army officer (Vladimir Mashkov) after the defeat of the Whites in the civil war in Russia emigrated to Poland (Lwów was a Polish city at that time). The chief dream of his was to buy Alaska from the USA and to return it back to Russia.


Purgatory
1998 · 2h
country: Russia
This is a story about the battle for a hospital building in Grozny (Chechnya) in January 1995 between Russian Army forces and Chechen rebels supported by Arabian mujahideen and international mercenaries. Although the story is fictional, most of the characters are based on real-life prototypes and events are the compilation of true events during the Grozny Siege in the First Chechen War.


Peculiarities of the National Fishing
1998 · 1h 35m
country: Russia
General Ivolgin, forester Kuzmich, and good-natured Lyova lose their way on a fishing trip and wind up in a neighboring country, where they decide to have a good time anyway but end up leaving their vodka and fishing equipment behind.


Anomaly
1993 · 1h 23m
country: Russia
Based on Clifford Simak's story "All Flesh is Grass". In the small settlement strange things lately are created, and soon the settlement is cut off from the outside world by an insuperable wall. The scientist Alexander Kartin tries to investigate the unusual phenomenon.


The Outskirts
1998 · 1h 35m
country: Russia
The hero is an ordinary farmer, Philip Safronov, whose peaceful life is aggressively interrupted when his land is appropriated by a mysterious group to exploit its oil resources.
Похитители воды
Похитители воды
1992
country: Russia
No overview available


What a Mess!
1995 · 2h 23m
country: Russia
A Russian criminal steals a giant diamond from the Mafia, hides it, and suddenly runs into his unknown brothers; unexpected, absurd events with participation of the mob, doctors, musicians, Americans, militia, and gypsies ensue.


Classic
1998 · 1h 40m
country: Russia
In Russia, there has long been a society of billiards, whose members are scattered throughout the country. Many of them have long become millionaires. And they should thank the old school teachers for this. Most of these old people live starving and lonely. In order to somehow brighten up their old age, the new generation of billiards decided to chip in and give their teachers a big mansion, where there will be decent food, good medical care and fresh air. No one refused his share of the contribution, except for an authority by the name of Savitsky. Soon, he completely changes his mind and organizes an ambush on the road, takes away not only his own money, but also his total money. The barely surviving couriers report this to all members of the community. The group comes up with a decent punishment by sending him a professional pool player nicknamed Classic. The bandit will have to fight with a virtuoso who prefers to play for large sums in order to save money.


Everything Will Be All Right
1995 · 1h 40m
country: Russia
This charming comedy tracks the lives of several romantic pairs through trials and tribulations. The main focus of the story is a young soldier with a good heart but little ambition and his fiancée, who feels torn when a charming and sophisticated intellectual enters her life and sweeps her off her feet. There are also several side stories, also all dealing with relationships, most significantly the soldier's mother, whose comfortable but unexceptional marriage is threatened when a past love returns to her life.


Proving Ground 1
1994 · 1h 27m
country: Russia
About the incredible adventures of hallucinating teenagers from a children's colony, who, as a result of a scientific experiment by their teachers, end up in the "Wild West", among space monsters, in a world of fantastic nature and all sorts of political situations. Some become a cowboy, some become Hitler, some become Emperor Paul I, etc. Three colonists, with the assistance of one of the teachers, actively resist these experiments...


Encore, Once More Encore!
1992 · 1h 44m
country: Russia
A drama set at the end of the Forties and the beginning of the Fifties. In a distant garrison town, life proceeds at a measured past. The officers drink and debauch, while the soldiers serve. Meanwhile accidentally unleashed human emotions are suffocated by the atmosphere of cruelty and hypocrisy.


RUMBA
1999 · 6m
country: Russia
Lumiere's The Arrival Of A Train in Russian.


Pripyat
1999 · 1h 40m
country: Austria
After the catastrophe in 1986, a 30-km restricted zone was erected around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and 116,000 persons were evacuated from this area. Pripyat is a portrait of the people who still live and work there, and of those who have moved back. What is life like for these people, a life with the invisible and incomprehensible danger of radioactivity? How do they deal with the aftereffects of an accident which is claimed to be statistically improbable? Four protagonists tell their stories and provide a look at everyday life in “their“ zone.


Arbiter
1992 · 1h 20m
country: Russia
The city "N" seized by chaos and lawlessness. A hitman nicknamed "The Arbiter" accomplishes justice. Experienced investigator and his partner, a young police lieutenant, decided to catch the mysterious killer. During the investigation, it turns out that the killer is a man who were a victim once.


The Family
1998 · 1h 35m
country: Azerbaijan
January 1990, Baku. The Soviet Union hasn't collapsed yet. Around 300 thousand Azeri have been forsed out from their homes in Armenia and Daghlig Garabagh. Rallies of protest, political meetings spring up in Baku. The old patriarch, Ismail gathers under his roof distant relatives, people of different nationalities, beliefs, and ideas. The old man is tortured by everything happening around him: unrest in the city as well as discord and discarder in his own overpopulated apartment. All his efforts to preserve the family are in vain. People want to live separately. Former friends become bitter enemies because of the senseless aggression.


Painful Hold
1992 · 1h 23m
country: Russia
Almost immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the era of "market relations"begins. Capitalism is re-emerging in the country. It is time for redistribution of property and spheres of influence between criminal groups. War breaks out between gangs, in the ranks of which are often former athletes. Especially appreciated are those who have the skills of martial arts. At this time, a group of children who profess a rare kind of hand-to-hand fighting, called "Russian style", comes to one provincial city. Their appearance greatly alarmed the leaders of the two rival gangs controlling the city. They are trying to get these valuable fighters into their ranks. In the course of going any means, and the guys are forced to defend themselves.


Being in love
1992 · 1h 23m
country: Russia
Caring Svetlana wants to give her close friend Natalia and secretly sends her data to the dating bureau. After some time, on the threshold of the apartment of unsuspecting Svetlana, two men appear in full bloom ...


Burnt by the Sun
1994 · 2h 15m
country: Russia
Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying a social call...


The Wooden Room
1995 · 1h 5m
country: Russia
The protagonist of The Wooden Room is a director of documentaries, who lives with his wife - who is as stoic as he - in an isolated hut in the woods. The director is obsessed by filming marginal events in life. The closer he can get to these events with his camera, the more he becomes involved with them. In the end he falls victim to them. The film, with no dialogue and hardly any sound, is an experimental meditation on the complex, continually-changing relationship between a film-maker and his subject.


Chekist
1992 · 1h 31m
country: France
Srubov is a part of CHEKA, the secret police Lenin established after the Bolshevik Revolution. They arrest, interview for a minute, try in ten seconds, and execute intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergy, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. No one to remember their last words; no martyrs, just anonymous bodies. Daily, the kangaroo court, the executions, the loading of bodies onto wagons. Srubov is cold, distant, sexually dysfunctional, and a deep thinker, hated by former friends and his family. As he tries to reason the nature of revolution and the purpose of CHEKA, he slowly goes mad.


Burial of the Rats
1995 · 1h 18m
country: Russia
In 19th Century France, a young Bram Stoker is captured by a man-hating, all-female cult of thong bikini wearers. Aided by flesh-eating rats, the warrior women raid the lairs of evil men and punish them. Our hero must decide between his wish to escape the dangerous cult and his love for one of its members.


The Old Man and the Sea
1999 · 21m
country: Russia
An old fisherman makes the biggest catch of his life.
The 1990s were the independent film decade, when Sundance and Miramax pushed low-budget American filmmaking into the mainstream. It's also when Hong Kong action, Japanese animation, and Iranian art cinema found large Western audiences.
Russian and Soviet cinema produced the montage theory that underpins modern editing, along with Tarkovsky's long-form spiritual epics — two traditions about as far apart as film gets.