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


Kraken
2025 · 2h 14m · RU
A Russian missile submarine disappears without trace during a secret mission in the Greenland Sea. A vessel is deployed to search for it, captained by the brother of the missing submarine’s commander. The search crew is tasked with locating the submarine and preventing a top-secret weapon from falling into enemy hands. Meanwhile, a geological research operation at the North Pole awakens the Kraken, a giant deep-water monster with an incredible ability to camouflage and an uncanny intelligence. As the search party narrows in on the missing submarine, they will encounter the legendary creature of the deep.


Persian Lessons
2020 · 2h 7m · RU
Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.


Invasion
2020 · 2h 9m · RU
Two years after the fall of the alien ship, the life of a young woman from Moscow has been changed forever. Her growing powers are now at the focus of both human and celestial investigation: an alien force takes an interest in her, and will stop short of nothing, including an invasion. Can love and compassion save humanity, when faced with a much greater and more demanding test this time?


Fidelity
2019 · 1h 22m · RU
A successful obstetrician living a seemingly stable married life begins to question her relationship when emotional and physical intimacy fades. Suspecting her husband of betrayal, she seeks connection elsewhere, stepping into a hidden world that offers desire, control, and escape. As she navigates this parallel existence, the boundaries between loyalty, loneliness, and self-discovery slowly begin to blur.


The Cuckoo
2002 · 1h 40m · RU
September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Veikko managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.


Chernobyl: Abyss
2021 · 2h 16m · RU
The aftermath of a shocking explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station made hundreds of people sacrifice their lives to clean up the site of the catastrophe and to successfully prevent an even bigger disaster that could have turned a large part of the European continent into an uninhabitable exclusion zone. This is their story.


Leviathan
2014 · 2h 21m · RU
In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.


Russian Nymphet: Temptation
2004 · 35m · RU
A Russian teen turns the tables on her fashion photographer. Suddenly he doesn't like being the one on camera!


Anna Karenina
1997 · 1h 48m · RU
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.


Mira
2022 · 1h 50m · RU
Near future. Lera Arabova is a 15-year-old girl who lives with her family in Vladivostok. Lera's father has been working at the orbiting space station "Mira" for many years and has long lost contact with his daughter, turning only into a voice on the phone. After a meteor shower hits the city, Lera has only one chance to save her loved ones and the city from a new disaster. Her father helps her in this - through satellite surveillance systems and the telephone, he uses every opportunity to send a message to his daughter, watching from above from the station her every step.


Attraction
2017 · 1h 57m · RU
After an alien ship crash lands in a Russian city, many who see the inside and the occupants start to question their own existence while others demand the aliens leave Earth.


Petrov's Flu
2021 · 2h 25m · FR
With the city in the throes of a flu epidemic, the Petrov family struggles through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fueled, icy fever dream of violence and tenderness, and where – beneath layers of the ordinary – things turn out to be extraordinary.


Battle for Sevastopol
2015 · 1h 50m · RU
The story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the most successful female sniper in history.


Sputnik
2020 · 1h 53m · RU
At the height of the Cold War, a Soviet spacecraft crash lands after a mission gone awry, leaving the commander as its only survivor. After a renowned Russian psychologist is brought in to evaluate the commander’s mental state, it becomes clear that something dangerous may have come back to Earth with him…


Balkan Line
2019 · 2h 10m · RU
After the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Yugoslav army pulls out of Kosovo region, leaving Serbian people at the mercy of the Albanian UCK. A small band of soldiers must take over the Slatina airport, and hold it until the Russian peacekeepers arrive.


The Master and Margarita
2024 · 2h 37m · RU
A struggling writer in 1930s Soviet Moscow finds his life transformed when a mysterious professor arrives with his bizarre entourage, including a wisecracking trickster, a deadly assassin, a vampire maid, and a giant talking black cat, turning the city upside down while exposing the hypocrisy of those in power.


Centaur
2023 · 1h 41m · RU
Liza works at night, a taxi ride for her is a moment of much-desired peace. The driver Sasha inspires confidence, he knows the approach to the most demanding client. There are many unexpected turns in the lights of the big city, behind each of which lies a terrible threat. And perhaps the main danger is closer than it seems.


Krisis
2016 · 32m · RU
Dimitri Venkov’s Krisis is based on a Facebook discussion on December 8, 2013, the day on which pro-European demonstrators in Kiev started to demolish statues of Vladimir Lenin. The film reenacts debates between Russian and Ukrainian artists during the protests, revealing deep aesthetic, historical, and political divisions.


I, A Russian Soldier
1995 · RU
No overview available


Kalashnikov AK-47
2020 · 1h 45m · RU
A Russian military propaganda film about the tank commander Kalashnikov, severely injured in battle in 1941. The accident leaves him incapacitated and unable to return to the front line. While recovering in the hospital, he begins creating the initial sketches of what will become one of the world’s most legendary weapons. A self-taught inventor is only 29 when he develops the now iconic assault riffle — the AK-47. Shot in occupied Crimea.


Naughty
2023 · 1h 49m · RU
In order to prevent the construction of a skyscraper in an urban forest, Elya, a young environmental activist, accepts a challenge from the mega wealthy developer: If after spending seven days with him, she doesn't fall for him, he'll stop the project. During this time of luxury and passion, Elya becomes increasingly attracted to him.


My Love
2006 · 26m · RU
In nineteenth-century Russia, a teenage boy in search of love is drawn to two very different women.


The Pilot: A Battle for Survival
2021 · 1h 45m · RU
December of 1941, Northwestern Front. A German tank column is moving towards Moscow. During a mission to stop the enemy advance, Nikolai Komlev's IL-2 is shot down. Komlev manages to crash-land his plane in a remote forest clearing. He's alive, but far from friendly territory. Ahead of him is a relentless trial of severe physical and mental endurance. After battling hunger and extreme cold, evading packs of wolves and detachments of Nazi soldiers, the wounded Komlev finally makes it back to safety. But there he faces another challenge, the most life-changing of them all.


Intensive Care
2023 · 1h 42m · RU
Overcoming the midlife crisis and experiencing an internal shock, sports news anchor Egor Tikhonov becomes a volunteer, he helps mothers of sick children in the cancer ward, searches for lost people together with "Lisa alert". gradually finding a new life, Egor begins to lose the old one: he loses his job, almost divorces his wife. and more and more often he asks himself if he is a strong enough person to go his way to the end.


Baby Boy
2026 · 1h 54m · RU
In 2022, 18-year-old Dima, an ordinary guy from Donetsk, whose life revolved around rap and dreams of fame, is facing a severe test. The news that his mother ended up in besieged Mariupol and stopped contacting him forces him to leave music and join the assault squad as a volunteer to save her. In a war-torn city, he ends up in a Bug unit, which gives the recruit the call sign Kid. Experiencing all the horrors of a military conflict, an infantile teenager undergoes profound internal changes, rapidly turning into a mature and courageous warrior.


Loveless
2017 · 2h 2m · BE
Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.


Moon Glades
2003 · 1h 57m · FR
Nina is a young woman of thirty years, who lives in St. Petersburg. She has to bury her mother in a winter day. The ceremony is an opportunity for her to meet her younger brother Andrei, who lives elsewhere.


The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment
1999 · 1h 35m · RU
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.


The Hustler
2026 · 1h 36m · RU
Two up-and-coming friends, seeing themselves as the future elite of the new world, oligarchs, they sign up for a major deal, but it turns out that they have been drawn into a massive embezzlement scheme involving billions from the treasury. After his arrest, Andrei ends up in an overcrowded communal cell, a purgatory where he must transform himself into a different person in order to survive and return back to the real world, to his family.


Ruki Vverh!
2024 · 1h 40m · RU
On the eve of the big concert "Hands up!" an attempt is made on the lead singer of the legendary band Sergei Zhukov. He manages to avoid a bullet, but what if this is not a miracle, but a cold calculation, and the purpose of the shooter is to intimidate the artist?


The Picture of Dorian Grey
1915 · 22m · RU
A corrupt young man somehow keeps his youthful beauty, but a special painting gradually reveals his inner ugliness to all.


Foreigner
1937 · 24m
A small river separates Soviet lands from the territory of one of the capitalist powers. On the other side, the girl Pebble lives with her peasant father. One morning, after running after a cow across a river, the girl crossed to the Soviet side. She only spends one day in the kindergarten of the border post, but this day remains in her memory for the rest of her life. Seeing the bright, spacious rooms, the beautiful clothes of the children, delicious plentiful food, and many toys, the girl remembers with bitterness her dilapidated hut, where there is not always bread for dinner. Caressed by the Soviet people, in a new dress, with a bunch of donated toys, Pebble goes back home. A rude shout from a gendarme officer brings the girl back to bitter reality.


Nuuccha
2021 · 1h 47m · RU
Based on the short story Hailak and other works by Wacław Sieroszewski, the plot follows Khabdzhiy and Keremes, a poor Yakut couple struggling to survive after the death of their second child. When a Russian political prisoner, Konstantin, is sent to their home by the local ruler, their worlds collide. Despite their differences, the household must unite against the relentless wild, and over time Konstantin asserts himself as the master of the house, altering their lives forever.


Tycoon
2002 · 2h 8m · FR
During the Gorbachev years, Platon Makovski and his four buddies are university students who jump on the private capitalism movement. Fast-forward 20 years, Platon finds himself the richest man in Russia, having sacrificed his friends to get to the top. But with this cynical rise, comes a brutal fall.


Piter By
2016 · 30m · RU
This is Peter. Not Petersburg, not Leningrad - namely, Peter. A city of big ambitions and opportunities. As a rule, unrealized. Often they joke that there is a particular climate to blame. As if he makes us all a bit lazy and unhurried, and turns the city into an endless northern Magnan. But let's be honest: if the weather was good here, you would have moved here. So thank you, Lord, for the right climate! Peter is first of all people. No museums, no cathedrals or movable bridges. People - this is the present. They fill the city with meaning. Make it alive. Rock musicians and street artists, businessmen and careerists, conductor, cooks, officials, urban madmen, just visiting. Everything is interesting here. Uneasy ... All yours. City swallows.


9th Company
2005 · 2h 19m · FI
Russian army recruits complete training and take their posting in late 1980s Afghanistan, where the insurgents are slowly gaining the upper hand.


Sunflower
1970 · 1h 49m · IT
After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?


The Aviator
2025 · 1h 57m · RU
A person with amnesia writes down his memories in an attempt to reconstruct his life history.


Sobibor
2018 · 1h 50m · RU
The film is based on a real story that happened in 1943 in the Sobibor concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. The main character of the movie is the Soviet-Jewish soldier Alexander Pechersky, who at that time was serving in the Red Army as a lieutenant. In October 1943, he was captured by the Nazis and deported to the Sobibor concentration camp, where Jews were being exterminated in gas chambers. But, in just 3 weeks, Alexander was able to plan an international uprising of prisoners from Poland and Western Europe. This uprising resulted in being the only successful one throughout the war, which led to the largest escape of prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp.


The Price of Head
1992 · 1h 28m · UA
Commissioner Maigret's new case. At the rate of his further service in the police.
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.
Drama is cinema's widest category and its default setting — character, conflict, and consequence without genre machinery. It's where most awards conversation lives, and where directors go when the story is the effect.