REVIEWS

Eldar Ryazanov had a remarkable ability to find romance in the most unromantic places. Throughout his career, he used comedy to explore loneliness, bureaucracy and the absurdity of social convention. ‘The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath’ turned an accidental trip to Leningrad into an unlikely love story, while ‘Office Romance’ found passion blooming amid the confines of a Moscow workplace. With ‘The Garage’, meanwhile, Ryazanov turned his attention more directly towards soc

Estonian cinema in the late 1960s existed in a state of transformation. In ‘New Waves, New Spaces: Estonian Experimental Cinema of the 1970s’, Eva Näripea cites literary critic Mart Velsker, arguing that the innovative spirit of the 60s was expressed most vividly between 1968 and 1972. Yet the same paper notes that many local critics place the birth of "true" Estonian New Wave about a decade later. Although Estonian cinema from this time remains relatively unfamiliar to int

Unlike his friend and classmate from the Higher Directing Course at Mosfilm, Georgiy Daneliya, Aleksandr Sery never had the opportunity to become a household name in Soviet cinema. He only made five features, and although one of them, ‘Gentlemen of Fortune’, became a cultural landmark, its production coincided with a devastating prognosis. During the making of that film, Sery was diagnosed with leukaemia, steadily eroding his health and ability to work. As the illness progres

Film noir has always thrived on shadow- moral, psychological and literal. Born from post-war disillusionment, it evokes rain-slicked streets and smoke-filled rooms, where cynical detectives navigate worlds already rotting from within. Though closely tied to mid-20 th -century Hollywood, noir was never confined to American cities alone. In Europe, as well as in Soviet and Eastern Bloc cinema, it surfaced in fractured, disguised forms. In the Soviet Union, where film was meant

At the heart of Soviet comedies stand three towering figures: Leonid Gaidai, Eldar Ryazanov and Georgiy Daneliya. Widely considered the triumvirate of the genre, their films often blend wry humour with pointed social commentary. However, while comparable in stature, their sensibilities diverge sharply. Gaidai revelled in anarchic slapstick, Ryazanov excelled in bittersweet satire, and Daneliya- perhaps the most quietly profound of the three- infused his comedies with a gentle

In early 1970's Moscow, scientist Shurik toils in his apartment trying to create a working time-machine. He is dedicated to the task, so...

It is the 1970's and Afanasy Borshchov- Afonya to his friends- is a cynical, jovial plumber living in the city of Yaroslavl. He and his...

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to a space station above the oceanic planet Solaris, tasked with...

It is the 1980’s, and Vladimir Mashkov is a foreman in Moscow. One day, while walking along Kalinin Prospekt- now New Arbat Avenue- he...

In the early 1970's, archaeologists at a dig in the USSR make an incredible find: a golden helmet that once belonged to Alexander the...

It is New Year's Eve in Moscow and Zhenya is about to get married. To celebrate his upcoming nuptials and to ring in the new year, he and...