Russian Documentary Movies

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.

Once upon a time in Russia, communism fell and Rock 'n' Roll rose to power. One band reigned supreme and toured far and wide across the eastern earth, but never even left Russia - until now. They only have once chance, to not only rule Russia -but to become the best band in the West. The strategy is simple - get on the boat, create an album - and make new friends. All with hopes of finally becoming a household name in the United States. But sometimes fame is harder than just toppling a government.

A crew of film-makers made the effort to record what reflects the generation gap between the little girl Lisa and the world of adults in her family

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.

Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.

Circulation of passers-by and cars in the paved street on the occasion of the Tsar's coronation.

After the war began, memorial plaques bearing the names of victims of repression started being torn down far more often than before. The Last Address project didn’t have the resources to keep up with the vandalism. A group of activists stepped in: they began making temporary cardboard plaques and set out to track down those responsible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A documentary in which six influential mathematicians demonstrate the beauty of mathematics. It's sounds, colors, taste, texture, and balance are revealed through their eyes.

A meld of legendary performers and contemporary artists of today who have been influenced by Ray's music perform in this concert extravaganza.

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.

From Istanbul, feminist Anastasia Polozkova probes Russia's post-2022 assault on reproductive rights. In calls with activists, doctors and researchers in Russia/exile, Turkish and Kurdish feminists, she asks: ban in law, or in practice?

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.

Vasya Sitnikov was officially insane, a man without a passport, in and out of mental institutions, yet he was the key figure of the nonconformist art movement in the Soviet Union. He left behind astonishing works of art, yet he remains a compelling, controversial mystery. Why does his legend still confound those who knew him?

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.

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 true history of Japanese Unit 731, from its beginnings in the 1930s to its demise in 1945, and the subsequent trials in Khabarovsk, USSR, of many of the Japanese doctors from Unit 731. The facts are told, and previously unknown evidence is revealed by an eyewitness to these events, former doctor and military translator, Anatoly Protasov.

This unconventional film is an observation Teodor Currentzis – one of the most extra-ordinary modern conductors. Backed by pieces from Mozart, Stravinsky, Jean-Philippe Rameau and with choreography by Jiri Kylian, this film is 64 minutes of love, light, life, beauty and being inside music.

Khodorkovsky, the richest Russian, challenges President Putin. A fight of the titans begins. Putin warns him. But Khodorkovsky comes back to Russia knowing that he will be imprisoned, once he returns. When I heard about it, I asked myself: why didn't he stay in exile with a couple of billions? Why did he do that? A personal journey to Khodorkovsky.

Director Nikita Mikhalkov documents the history of Russia from 1980 to 1991 by annually asking his daughter Anna such questions as "What do you love the most?", "What scares you the most?", "What do you want above anything" and "What do you hate the most?"

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.

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 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.

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.

Facing sub-zero temperatures, with no protection from the elements, free-diver, Natalia Avseenko, swims naked with beluga whales in a bizarre experiment designed to tame the shy creatures.

The question is, whether Katya Golubeva, an icon of the European underground cinema, determined her fate with the parts she played, or the fate of her characters affected her own fate?

Depicts a community of pensioners living in near isolation outside of St. Petersberg as it enacts the weekly ritual of bringing a delivery of bread—left at a rail junction two hours away—into the village for distribution.

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.

A man lies in bed illuminated by the blue-white light of his mobile phone. He doom scrolls past cute pets, outraged opinion pieces and haunting images from the world's hotspots – and he feels absolutely nothing. With curiousity and humour, director David Borenstein travels the world to investigate how bad things really are. Who is pulling the strings when the internet makes us angry, sad, horny or just plain indifferent? And is there any way back? From the American internet troll, a burnt-out superstar in the Asian influencer industry, a cynical fake-news factory in Eastern Europe, Russian state propagandists and an online dominatrix, this is an alarming contemporary diagnosis, with a bold attempt to also look at solutions.

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.

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.

September 28, 1991, at Tushino Airfield in Moscow, was described as "the first free outdoor Western rock concert in Soviet history" and had a crowd estimated between 150,000 and 500,000 people, with some unofficial estimates as high as 1,600,000.

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.

“Homo Sperans” is a portrait of a Russian person composed of many images. The film's heroes are common men who answer with their lives the universal questions: what is the purpose of our existence, what is happiness, what is it to be a patriot. Their strength is in their ability to keep their chins up and always believe in a good outcome.

"Bania" is an exploration Russian society through its bath-houses in the city, the countryside, in a monastery, a factory or a prison. The film plays with the boundaries between personal and social space in scenes where naked bodies, marked by tattoos, suffering, labour or war, tell a tale. This film was made by a photographer who, confronted by these naked bodies bathed in steam, invents an unique and timeless plastic world, in the style of classical painting.

This documentary follows ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko from his forced exile from Russia, to his death from poisoning in November of 2006.

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.