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- DirectorLarry WeinsteinStarsValery GergievNetherlands Radio PhilharmonicFlora LitvinovaDocumentary on how composer Dmitri Shostakovich used his Fourth to Ninth Symphony as a silent protest against the crimes of Stalin.
- DirectorLeo De BoerA detailed and in-depth look at the early days of the Soviet Union's space program as told by cosmonauts themselves.
- DirectorAlix LambertSailing ships, stars, angels and executioners, The Mark of Cain chronicles the vanishing practice and language of Russian Criminal Tattoos. Captured in some of Russia's most notorious prisons, including the fabled White Swan, the film traces the animus of the flowers of this carnal art by way of the brutality of it's origins: the penitentiary and the criminal environment. Incisive interviews with prisoners, guards, and criminologists reveal the secret language of The Zone and The Code of Thieves of the vory v zakone.
- DirectorVikram JayantiStarsMarc GhannoumJoel BenjaminMichael GreengardIn 1997, chess champion Garry Kasparov goes head-to-head against IBM's computer, Deep Blue, and accuses IBM of cheating its way to victory. Interviews with Kasparov, his manager and members of the Deep Blue team illuminate the controversy.
- DirectorDeborah MakahraIt was an terrorist attack of breathtaking audacity and daring. 40 Chechen separatists took over a Moscow theater where over 800 people were watching the musical Nord-Ost. 58 hours later, the standoff ended when special forces agents armed with nerve gas stormed the booby-trapped theater. All the kidnappers died, along with 129 of the hostages. Terror Strikes Moscow reconstructs every step of the incredible ordeal, from the terrorists' original plan to the aftermath of the deadly rescue. Insiders reveal how the terrorists took over and controlled the theater, and detail the negotiations that opened with a threat to kill everyone inside if Russia failed to totally withdraw from Chechnya. Follow the rescuers into the barricaded theater, and see why so many of the hostages died alongside their captors. With a sweeping look at the background of the conflict and intimate accounts from inside the theater, Terror Strikes Moscow analyzes every aspect of this deadly standoff.
- StarsBob van TolAlbrecht AppeltHans RostewitzThe World War 2 Battle of Stalingrad from the initial attack to the repatriation of the survivors after the war.
- DirectorMalcolm DixeliusBengt LöfgrenStarsViacheslav FetisovAlexei KasatonovVladimir KrutovCCCP-Hockey is a hockeytale about sacrifice and ruthless demands ending up in a revolt against the Soviet-system.
- DirectorEwa EwartLeslie WoodheadOn September 1, 2004, a group of heavily armed rebel extremists stormed into School No. 1 in Beslan, Russia. For three days, more than a thousand children and adults were held hostage in a sweltering gymnasium, denied food and water, and forced to keep their hands over their heads. The harrowing siege ended on September 3 with a series of explosions and a hail of gunfire that killed some 350 people - half of them children. In this film, the youngest survivors of Beslan tell their story.
- DirectorJoe HaldermanStarsRuslan AushevShamil BasayevDmitry BeliakovIn September 2004, Chechen rebels occupied a school in the small Russian city of Beslan, taking some 1,200 people-most of them children-hostage. At the end of three days, over 330 were dead.
- DirectorSergey LoznitsaThe city of Leningrad and the blockade during the Second World War. No words. No music. Only sounds and black and white images of a dying city.
- DirectorBen LewisStarsMikhail GorbachevVáclav HavelWojciech JaruzelskiGeorge Orwell wrote that in a repressive political system every joke is a "tiny revolution." Jokes were an essential part of the communist experience because the monopoly of state power meant that any act of non-conformity, down to a simple turn of phrase, could be construed as a form of dissent. By the same token, a joke about any facet of life became a joke about communism. Hammer and Tickle recounts a humorous history of the Soviet Union and its satellite states through the jokes that flourished under the oppressive regimes in Russia and parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Jokes, the film contends, were a language of truth under Communism; a language that allowed people to navigate the disconnect between propaganda and reality and provided a means of resisting the system despite the absence of free speech. Using animated sequences, manipulated archival footage, and sketches to resurrect the jokes, the film offers an ironic take on the history of Communism while simultaneously investigating the social and political impact of jokes under Soviet rule. Interviews with Solidarity leader and former Polish president Lech Walesa, hard-line Polish leader General Jaroszelski, German actor Peter Sodann, German satirist and author Ernst Roehl, East German newspaper editor and Politburo member Guenter Schabowski, and academics Christie Davies and Roy Medvedev address the role that jokes played in challenging and weakening the Communist system from the inside even as joke-tellers faced censure or time in the Gulag for voicing their humor. Light and irreverent in its tone, Hammer and Tickle is really about the ultimate seriousness of joking and the use of the power of laughter to overcome hardship. This history of humor under the Soviet regime offers a direct, incontrovertible way to understand what it was like living in a Communist society, and is also proof that the human spirit can never be broken.
- DirectorSergey BukovskyStarsPolina Bel'skaiaMaryna ChaikaMariia Egorycheva-GlagolevaSurvivors tell the story of the Babi Yar massacre from WWII, where some 100,000 people were massacred by German forces.
- DirectorDavid HoffmanStarsLiev SchreiberGene BanucciJay BarbreeDocumentary looking back at the USSR's Sputnik satellite and its effects at the time and over the last 50 years.
- DirectorEdvins SnoreStarsJon StricklandVladimir BukovskyVladimir LeninThe Soviet Story offers an alternative history of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale.
- StarsAleksey PetrenkoBob GuntonPaul HumpoletzA story showing the 3 allied leader's, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin's actions and relationships behind the scenes during World War 2. It isn't as friendly as it seems. Shows how close the war was to favoring the axis if the Soviet Union joined forces with Hitler's Nazi's.
- DirectorDenny HootenSamuel OldhamStarsGordon FellerYuri GagarinElliott GouldWould you be shocked to find out that the greatest moment of our recent history in space may not have happened at all?
- DirectorAlexander GentelevStarsLeonid BilunovAlimzhan TokhtakhunovVitaly DemochkaDocumentary film from 2010 tries to give a picture of Russian organized crime not only by describing this system, but also by interviewing some of involved persons, a number of which are currently wanted by Interpol.
- DirectorWerner HerzogDmitry VasyukovStarsWerner HerzogGennady SolovievAnatoly BlumeiA documentary depicting the life and work of the trappers of Bakhtia, a village in the heart of the Siberian Taiga, where daily life has changed little in over a century.
- DirectorRobin HessmanTells the story of five people from the last generation of Soviet children who were brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Just coming of age when the USSR collapsed, they witnessed the world of their childhood crumble and change beyond recognition. Through the lives of these former schoolmates, this intimate film reveals how they have adjusted to their post-Soviet reality in today's Moscow.
- DirectorHans PoolStarsVladimir PutinViktor TeplyakovAlexey VoevodinPutin's Olympic Dream is about the rapid transformation of the city of Sochi. In just a couple of years it has to be refashioned from a nostalgic Soviet holiday resort, filled with gorgeous sanatoriums, into a modern Russian city. The Olympic Winter Games are held here in February 2014, and literally everything and everyone has to yield in order to turn this status project of President Putin into a success.
- DirectorGabe PolskyStarsViacheslav FetisovVladislav TretiakScotty BowmanThe story of the Soviet Union's famed Red Army hockey team through the eyes of its players.
- DirectorSergey LoznitsaIn August 1991 a failed coup d'état attempt (known as Putsch) led by a group of hard-core communists in Moscow, ended the 70-year-long rule of the Soviets. The USSR collapsed soon after, and the tricolour of the sovereign Russian Federation flew over Kremlin. As president Gorbachev was detained by the coup leaders, state-run TV and radio channels, usurped by the putschists, broadcast Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" instead of news bulletins, and crowds of protestors gathered around Moscow's White House, preparing to defend the stronghold of democratic opposition led by Boris Yeltsin, in the city of Leningrad thousands of confused, scared, excited and desperate people poured into the streets to become a part of the event, which was supposed to change their destiny. A quarter of a century later, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the dramatic moments of August 1991 and casts an eye on the event which was hailed worldwide as the birth of "Russian democracy". What really happened in Russia in August 1991? What was the driving force behind the crowds on the Palace Square in Leningrad? What exactly are we witnessing: the collapse or the regime or its' creative re-branding? Who are these people looking at the camera: victors or victims?
- DirectorVera KrichevskayaA documentary biopic of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure of Russian political opposition and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Boris Nemtsov got murdered in Moscow in February of 2015.
- DirectorFotos LambrinosStarsFotos Lambrinos1917- 2017 One century from the October Revolution. The big dream, the vision shared by millions of people over the world left an indelible mark on the 20th century. It was a utopian dream that this documentary describes and tries to interpret. The "Great Utopia" narrates the fall of the Tzar, the breakout of the "October revolution", the domination of the Bolsheviks, the civil war, the failure of "war communism", Lenin's efforts to implement the new economic policy (NEP) and the huge explosion (and subsequent implosion) of the Soviet society: social progress, free commerce, agricultural production, education, women's position, visual arts, poetry, literature, theatre, music, cinema, architecture. It was a short-lived era of creativity and the Bolsheviks dreamy of spreading it all over the world. Indeed, many communist parties sprang that ended up forming the "Communist International", an institution meant to coordinate the workers' movements in capitalist countries. Millions of people also dreamy to visit the Soviet Union and admire the accomplishments of socialism. Finally, few did so. In the meantime, in the Soviet Union, after Lenin's death, the expulsion of Trotsky and Stalin's rise, the dogma of the "war communism" comes back with a vengeance; the main goals are industrialization and collectivization, two processes that are enforced violently causing bloody conflicts with the farmers. Arrests and deportations of millions of peasants to faraway Siberia as well as an imposed famine to a large population leads to the death of more than 5 million people: the term HOLODOMOR maybe known only to the initiated; it means "death from famine" and defines the mass starvation in Ukraine in 1932-34. Immediately after, the regime, having achieved its goal, looks triumphant events and consolidates its autocracy. The prophetic painting by Nikritin "People's Trial" illustrates the tragedy.
- DirectorBryan FogelStarsBryan FogelDave ZabriskieDon CatlinWhen Bryan sets out to uncover the truth about doping in sports, a chance meeting with a Russian scientist transforms his story from a personal experiment into a geopolitical thriller.
- StarsOliver StoneVladimir PutinSergei ChudinovAcademy Award-winning film-maker Oliver Stone interviews Russian president Vladimir Putin about divisive issues related to U.S.-Russia relations.
- DirectorAlan ByronStarsMichael AdamsMuhammad AliViswanathan AnandFascinating story of the 1978 World Chess Championship between the Soviet Communist Party's protege, Anatoly Karpov and the traitor and Soviet defector, Viktor Korchnoi. One of those instances in life where truth is stranger than fiction.
- DirectorWerner HerzogAndré SingerStarsMikhail GorbachevWerner HerzogAndré SingerThe life of Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final President of the Soviet Union in chronological order.
- DirectorJoshua RiehlStarsScotty BowmanDon CherryMichael ChovichIn the late 1980s, the Detroit Red Wings worked to finally break their decades long Stanley Cup drought by extracting players from the Soviet Union, and in the process, changed the way North American hockey is played.
- DirectorVitaliy ManskiyStarsVladimir PutinTony BlairAnatoliy ChubaysA rare glimpse at the young Putin and the vast political machine that brought him to power.
- DirectorAlex GibneyStarsMikhail KhodorkovskyVladimir PutinLeonid NevzlinThe strange case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, who rocketed to prosperity and prominence in the 1990s, served a decade in prison, and became an unlikely martyr for the anti-Putin movement.
- DirectorVitaliy ManskiyStarsMikhail GorbachevChulpan KhamatovaEvgeniy MironovAn interview with former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the most influential figures of the last century, whose rule heralded the end of the Soviet Union. In an intimate setting, he gives his view of Russia then and now.
- StarsMikhail FishmanVladimir Kara-MurzaArkady OstrovskyA definitive account of Putin's power and how it changed the modern world.
- DirectorJon BlairStarsMarcel TherouxAlexei NavalnyVladimir PutinThe incredible story of Alexei Navalny and the Russian plot to kill him.
- DirectorDaniel RoherStarsAlexei NavalnyYulia NavalnayaChristo GrozevFollows the man who survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August 2020. During his months-long recovery he makes shocking discoveries about the attempt on his life and decides to return home.