Russian Documentary Movies

Timur Novikov: Zero Object positions the late artist Timur Novikov as protagonist in this exploration of underground art from St Petersburg. As well as providing a historical overview of the 1980s-1990s, the film features iconic figures in St Petersburg’s underground scene: cult rocker Victor Tsoi, and artists Georgy Guryanov, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe and Sergey ‘Africa’ Bugaev, among others. From beginning to end, it’s a manifesto for personal and artistic freedom in a forbidding political climate.

Artem loves Yulia, Yulia loves Artem. They recently graduated from school, moved to Moscow and began an independent life. In search of part-time jobs, Artem comes up with the idea of creating another image from Yulia - Eva Elfie - and making an amateur video for Pornhub. Suddenly, the video becomes popular, Eva gets more and more job offers, and Artem becomes the boyfriend and producer of a world celebrity. The heroes seem to fall into the "American dream", but in their personal lives there are more and more problems and doubts.

A sensitive and intimate portrait of Ivanna, a nomadic reindeer herder in the Russian Arctic and mother of five small kids. Ivanna is forced to leave the traditional way of life and emigrate to the city, following her own dreams, due to the quickly deteriorating conditions of life in the tundra. We follow her life for several years.

Tinnitus is the hearing of sound when no external sound is present. While often described as ringing, it may also sound like a clicking, hiss or roaring. The film is supposed to be the first one dedicated to music as an instrument for death exploration.

A brilliant observational documentary filmed at the Civil Registry office in St. Petersburg, where people come to have births, marriages, divorces and deaths registered. 'It’s like a theatre here', one says in the beginning of the film, and it indeed is, the Theater of Life. The young women working in the office have a job that shifts from being verbally attacked and called idiots, to situations where they are subject to flirt, or where they master the happy ceremony of marriage. Faces, joy, sorrow, fun, despair... It’s all very well composed, rhythmical, with atmosphere conveyed, and lives up to what a documentary should be: multilayered and universal. And about Life.

With capitalism and corruption becoming more entrenched in Russia, a father and his teenage son gear up for a yearlong political campaign to unseat President Putin in the 2008 elections and shift the country back toward socialism. Aliona Polunina's thoughtful documentary follows Anatoly and Andrei in their struggle to recreate a revolutionary fervor in a society that seems to be embracing the materialist values of the West.

Russia has a surfeit of overqualified graduates. Nastya Sokolova is one of them. Her career, if you can call it that, gave her a plethora of unexpected work experiences: from desk slave in banking to head bookkeeper of an illegal brothel. The film’s eight tableaus detail the various workplaces, colleagues and situations. To finish it off: deadpan commentary.

Аlina Makarova is a mother of six of her own children and one adopted child. Her ex husband is from Ethiopia, and all her own children are mixed race. Only her adopted son is white, but he has serious health problems and is psychologically unstable. Alina's older children realise what complications the adoption might bring and are afraid that there won't be enough room, time and love for everyone. But she convinces them that it's the right thing.

This is ‘a road movie’ encapsulated in the Moscow metro system and filmed over the course of one year: a documentary film that observes cultural and social issues in modern Russia.

This city is no longer on the map. In the 30-40s of the twentieth century, during the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir, seven hundred villages, one hundred and forty churches and monasteries, the ancient Russian city of Mologa went under water. An area of 4,600 kilometers was flooded. The deceased city carried away a secret that has not been solved so far.

Seven months of filming brown bear cubs life resulted in a movie that allows to plunge into the beauty of wild nature, and experience a boundary, beyond which a man should not interfere.

Celebrated Russian theatre director Anatoly Vasiliev's Asino (Italian for donkey) is an epic ode to this beast of burden. The donkey has a long cultural history dating back to Greek mythology and the Bible: Jesus rode into Jerusalem on one; Sancho Panza had a loyal donkey; Winnie the Pooh was friends with the dejected Eeyore. Donkeys stand for stupidity, stubbornness and humility.

In 2013, Dima Ilukhin, the cousin of the film’s director and a soldier in the Russian army, died on duty in the Republic of Dagestan in the North Caucasus. He was 21 years old. This incident marks the starting point for Abaturov’s reflection on the military. He films the training of new recruits in Siberia, as they bid farewell to their mothers and girlfriends, learn the mechanics of a Kalashnikov, or how to throw a hand grenade and administer first aid. While his parents try to cope with their loss, Dima’s former fellow recruits have to return to battle.

A cycle of mundane violence, lust for art, and existential dread—all chronicled in an unconventional self-titled docu-horror by Nikita Lavretski, who violently edits lo-fi footage of himself from age 0 to age 16.

The fascinating and tumultuous lives of Mikhail, Boris and Denis Kaufman (better known as Dziga Vertov) are the focus of this powerful documentary. Using rare archival footage from Russian state film archives and private collections, the brothers' lives and art are traced from Bialystok to Moscow, Paris, and Hollywood.

The Zharkov family-father, mother and two young sons-belong to the Dolgan community, one of the last indigenous peoples pursuing their traditional nomadic life in the extreme north of Siberia. The children used to be sent to boarding school, where they became estranged from their family and culture, but nowadays they can get homeschooling from teachers assigned to them by the Russian authorities. Seven-year-old Zakhar and his older brother Prokopy are the protagonists in this calm, observational film. Zakhar's first year of schooling is with Nelly, a young but serious teacher. She tells him about President Putin and the importance of mathematics, and he learns classical poems by heart.

The film is about the historical role of Georgians in Russian, and later - Soviet politics, culture and science. The heroes of the film are Bagration and Shevardnadze, Pirosmani and Danelia, Balanchine and Andronikov.

From the place where Joseph Brodsky died to the place where he was born, the distance is now insurmountable: there is no country or city where the poet left forty years ago in the world anymore. And that means there's no way to go back. But in the summer of 2014, by order of Brodsky's widow Maria, the last things in the poet's life are sent to the first house in his life. To St. Petersburg, to the corner of Pestel and Liteyny, to the Muruzi house. This film is an attempt at a group portrait of those whom Brodsky would have found if he had had the opportunity to return to Russia today. Formally, the characters of the film are talking about Brodsky. But in these stories, not literary critics, but people who have been strongly influenced by Brodsky, whom they have never seen, there are so many of themselves that a portrait of an entire generation has come out. Generations of Joseph Brodsky's children who had never seen their father with their own eyes in their lives.

The rich inner world of famous Georgian theater and film director, artist and puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze is as fantastic as the animation into which he has poured this story of his life. Rezo’s director son Levan "Leo" Gabriadze, who previously made the horror film Unfriended (2014), leaves it to his father to talk about a life suffused with magical thinking.

The film was conceived as a story about the history of the Gogol Center Theater and the case of Kirill Serebrennikov. But the circumstances were different. This is a film about a film that could not be made.

Eisenstein shot 50 hours of footage on location in Mexico in 1931 and 32 for what would have become ¡Que viva México!, but was not able to finish the film. Following two wildly different reconstruction attempts in 1939 (Marie Seton's 'Time in the Sun') and 1979 (Grigori Alexandrov's '¡Que viva México!') Kovalov has here compiled another hypothetical version of what Eisenstein's film might have been.

Legendary St. Petersburg composer Oleg Karavaichuk strolls through the Hermitage accompanied by his music. A seething genius among the masterpieces and interiors of the Winter Palace similar to himself.

The film is a trip to the planet Muscovy - an upside-down twin city of Moscow in space. As the title of the work suggests, the journey also takes us back in time. Gliding over the surface of the planet, we look down and see historic architectural styles fly by - the exuberant Socialist Classicism, aka Stalinist Empire, the austere and brutish Soviet Modernism, and the hodgepodge of contemporary knock-offs and revivals of the styles of the past. An essential companion to this journey through time and space are Hymnic Variations on the Soviet anthem.

The meeting of a giant inhabitant of the free nature of the Arctic with people is always a bright, unusual event. Once, walrus walrus Neseyka fell ill and was forced to come to people for help. An old Indian proverb and Russian fairy tales say the same thing: if you save an animal from death, it will never forget it.

Pasha and his mischievous friend Dan arrive from their provincial hometown to Moscow. Chasing a dream of a whole new adult life, they get to meet the city crew of graffiti writers. Being inspired by the coolest street artist of the city, Pasha starts naively dreaming of becoming a part of his crew. For the sake of achieving the goal, he's ready to make it as far as possible.

Ethnobloggers from the peoples of Russia - a Yakut hunter, a Khanty reindeer herder and a Dagestan shepherd - share their daily lives on camera. Their stories become known around the world, showing how new technologies are changing traditional ways of life.

Russian activists Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Samutsevich decide to separate from the well-known activist group Voina and create their own group named Pussy Riot that would express their ideas of female independence, combining activism, feminism, and punk rock music. Their defeat in court becomes their moral victory, as Pussy Riot are cheered on by thousands of their new-found fans.

Documentary about the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the former Soviet Union. Hanna Michailenko, an Ukrainian schoolteacher from Odessa was locked up in a psychiatric ward from 1980 until 1988 for refusing to work for the Soviet Secret Service, the KGB.

In the film Battle for Ukraine Andrei Konchalovsky, the famous Russian director, analyzes how Ukraine, a former part of the Soviet Empire and present big European country, struggles to escape from the close embrace of the former big brother, Russia, and not to become one of the American satellites. This extensive study lasted for almost three years. Many Ukrainian, Russian and American historians, politicians and journalists took part in this study, as well as the ex-President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, the ex-President of Slovakia Rudolf Schuster, the ex-President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, the ex-Prime Minister of Russia Viktor Chernomyrdin, and the businessman Boris Berezovsky.

The documentary project The Term was conceived in May 2012. When the directing trio commenced mapping the Russian sociopolitical landscape, Vladimir Putin had just settled into the Kremlin for his third term. The original experimental format of “documentary bulletins,” which were published daily online, allowed for wide-ranging content; in the feature film version, however, the filmmakers focused solely on the members of various opposition groups. Nevertheless, the work’s neutral position remains and viewers have to interpret the objectively presented situations for themselves. The main characteristics of this strongly authentic movie include close contact with the protagonists, precise editing, and an effectively controlled release of information.

Trilogy about love, experienced at different moments in life, by different people: an old couple, a young couple and two children at infant school.

In the heart of Russia, the city of Magnitogorsk is home to the Kombinat, one of the largest iron and steel factory in the country. Here, Gabriel Tejedor films the day-to-day lives of Lena, Sasha, Guenia and their families, while this new generation of young parents wonder about their living and working conditions, which seem pre-determined by the Kombinat and its State capitalism.

Two young intellectuals, Katya and Vassya, come to a small industrial town to work as teachers. They want to change the system of scholastic education and the social situation in difficult regions. The school is a closed conservative world, where obedience and discipline are of the highest value. Young teachers discover that nationalism, sexism and homophobia are typical for their new environment. Children see the school as a prison and are completely indifferent to any new ideas. During one school year we observe attempts of our protagonists to bring new practices into the system. Young teachers try to speak with children about feminism, human rights and Russian politics, but the system pushes them out, and a comedy turns into a drama.

On a remote coast of the Russian Arctic in a wind-battered hut, a lonely man waits to witness an ancient gathering. But warming seas and rising temperatures bring an unexpected change, and he soon finds himself overwhelmed.

A poetic view of Russian animation and of cultural and social transformations Russian society has been gone through. It is about multi faceted and humorous animation, almost never exposed to western eyes.

Do you believe in ghosts? An incantation becomes a refrain in this two-channel projection of sequences from an old film, recaptured on a Lomo lens. It’s all in her* hands shaping his form, her* labour questioning his authority.

Revered by the likes of Banksy and Brian Eno, the members of Russian collective Voina (War) have gained notoriety for public ‘actions’ that have landed their leaders in jail. In Tomorrow filmmaker and former ice-dancing champion Andrey Gryazev embeds himself with the group to create this fly-on-the-wall documentary focusing on Voina’s founders, Oleg Vorotnikov (known as Vor) and Natalia Sokol (known as Koza), along with their two-year-old son Kasper, who accompanies them on all of their actions.

One of kind go pro footage takes you inside the world of 19 year old Kyrill Oreshkin, who has garnered a resputation for freeclimbing moscow's tallest structures.

For generations, the Salamanca community of Mennonites has been living in the same modest and rigidly organized way. Modern-day scenes are accompanied by a voice-over narrating a man’s recollections of his youth. “As soon as I close my eyes,” he explains, “I go back to the past, to the moment when I made the choice that shaped my entire life.” Speaking in the Plautdietsch language, he talks calmly of the strong curiosity he felt as a young boy about the world beyond Salamanca and the Mennonite faith – a curiosity for which he paid dearly.

This is the story of one day in the life of a Georgian family. A fisherman's family celebrates Christmas day.