Russian

The 20 years Brief Encounters was banned by Soviet censors could not diminish the originality of this exquisite film, making it an instant classic.

Two strangers connect in the intimate confines of a train compartment in Juho Kuosmanen’s arresting sophomore feature.

Andrey Konchalovsky’s tense political drama, a Venice prize-winner beautifully shot and rich with historical detail, tells the story of an infamous 1962 Soviet massacre and its attempted cover-up.

A thrilling tale of resilience, Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner Flee is just as interested in the quiet toll trauma takes on survivors as it is the extraordinary acts that ensured their survival.

Natural Light confronts Hungary’s complicity in war crimes against pro-Soviet ‘partisans’ during World War II.

A mysterious, unclassifiable semi-satire of its disconnected upper-classes, Poland’s selection for this year’s Oscar race follows an angelic masseuse trying to draw meaning out of his patients’ lives.

By equal turns horrifying and beautiful, The Painted Bird sees Czech filmmaker Václav Marhoul put a young boy through every manner of evil that 1940s Eastern Europe can conjure in this war-torn vision of hell.

Timelier than perhaps intended, Kirill Serebrennikov’s hazy fever dream set in a flu-stricken, semi-dystopian post-Soviet Russia is a confronting, elusive vision of life in an eternally wintry hellscape.

The withering grip of the patriarchy pervades Kira Kovalenko's Cannes Un Certain Regard-winning tale of a young woman coming of age within a suffocating family in Russia’s desolate North Caucasus.

An absurdist chase across rural Kazakhstan, this offbeat gangster comedy follows a movie-obsessed ex-con with mobsters on his tail and a girl on his arm as he strives to realise his dream: building a cinema in the mountains.