Soviet or Russian TV or Film recommendations

silverharp · 25-01-2022 12:12pm #1

I stumbled over a nice little YT channel called Mosfilm , they have an 8 part Anna Karenina TV production among other things , the subtitles are good quality and its a well made period drama. They also have some epic scale old Soviet WW2 films and if you can get over the fact they play Stalin as a little too sage like they are a good watch if you like war movies.

Any other recommendations old or newer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEhdKWA7WC4

CastorTroy · 25-01-2022 8:15pm

Only ones I can think of off the top of my head would be Night Watch and it's sequel Day Watch. Can't say if they're any good as only had the first one on in the background years ago. Then the series Sniffer though only saw a couple episodes of that before it left Netflix.

billyhead · 25-01-2022 8:24pm

A bit of kilter OP but if you haven't seen it the Americans is very good.

Yurt2 · 25-01-2022 8:41pm

For trippy and unsettling sci-fi look no further than Tarkovsky: Solaris and Stalker being his most notable films. Urban legend has it he was assassinated by the KGB in Sweden when he left to make his career outside the USSR.

Come and See - Soviet movie about the Nazi invasion of Belarus. Harrowing, unforgettable and you'll be fortunate if this movie doesn't haunt your dreams. One of the most disturbing depictions of war in cinematic history. The making of it is an incredible story in and of itself. Took about 7-8 years to make and get past Soviet censors. The physical and psychological toll it took on the director and main child actor was huge. It was the director's first film and he retired after it was released. Apparently many viewers in the USSR had breakdowns and fainted during screenings such was its accuracy to the events of the second world war. (That's real live ammunition you're looking at in the movie as well btw!)

The Irony of Fate - Completely different to the movie above, this is a romantic comedy from the 70s. It's a Christmas classic in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life all across the former Soviet Union. Basically about a man who gets drunk in Moscow and ends up in Leningrad. There's an identical building to his apartment in Moscow with the exact same address in Leningrad and the key works. Hijinks ensue. Tounge in cheek send-up of identikit Brezhnev era architecture that proliferated all around the Soviet Union.

Brat (Brother) - Iconic noir gangster movie about a young Chechen war veteran who gets involved in organised crime in mid-90s St Petersburg

Ten of Swords · 25-01-2022 8:54pm

Russian studios do churn out some good war movies.

Fortress of War (also anglicised as Brest Fortress), about the first battle between the Nazis and Soviets during WW2 which was the German assault on Brest fortress, located in modern day Belarus. It was an operation the germans expected to take 6 hours but the defenders held out for over a week. Theres a scene in it where the luftwaffe drop the largest bomb in the german arsenal on the fort due to mounting casualties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkFr_LfaQPo

The entire movie is on YouTube with English subs.

Come and see, as mentioned above an 80s movie about a child soldier fighting with the Belarussian partisans against the nazis as they burn villages and commit genocide. I felt numb after watching it first, its harrowing, be warned! Filming it took a psychological toll on the 14 year old actor too.

The movie was filmed in chronological order, this is the actor at the start of the movie vs the end. His real life friends didn't recognise him when he went back to school when filming finished.

Fantasy movie, Guardians (nicknamed Russian Avengers!) was a box office bomb but I thought it wasnt bad, the special effects were good and the pacing was alright. One of the characters is a bear with a mini-gun, tells you all you need to know.

My favorite TV series was ZKD (Law of the Concrete Jungle), centred around 3 young lads constantly getting into trouble, it reminded me of Shameless a little bit! The first season episodes were on youtube at one point but appear to be gone now.

victor8600 · 25-01-2022 9:10pm

https://youtu.be/Auj_u7wEyw8

A very popular film, must see if you want to understand many memes that originated from it.

Yurt2 · 25-01-2022 9:10pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118532515#Comment_118532515

Come and See really is a difficult watch. Some of the visuals and vignettes are burned into my mind. Something as simple as the German reconnaissance plane overhead, the impending approach of evil. The burning of the village and the German soldiers taking photos of their victims for sport. The Nazi officer with the creature on his shoulder.

Not a Russian movie, but the Hungarian movie Son of Saul had the same effect on me. An unspeakably dark time in history - and astonishing from the vantage point of the 21st century how a sophisticated culture like Germany experienced a complete moral collapse and gave itself over to mass murder.

victor8600 · 25-01-2022 9:17pm

https://youtu.be/EYHv8eJrW2Y

Kin-dza-dza. Another very popular film, this time a Sci-fi classic from the last years of the USSR. Two normal Soviet citizens are accidentaly forced to survive in capitalist societies in a galaxy far far away.

Padraig Mor · 25-01-2022 9:19pm

Stepping away from the classics, Sputnik (2020) is an ace sci fi / horror film!

glen123 · 25-01-2022 9:25pm

Air Crew (the one made in 1979)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgSl7D_vtEE

Seventeen Moments of Spring

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZhgXs_iFRs&list=PLHiAMOiVIvsD2u8g0RLwvdRScEe9yiUr5&index=1

ballyargus · 25-01-2022 9:26pm

Almost anything by Tarkovsky. Andrei Rublev is amazing. Solaris, Mirror and Ivan's Childhood too.

Stalker might be the best place to start though.

Ten of Swords · 25-01-2022 9:44pm

Honorable mention for Hardcore Henry

This movie did get a western release so it's not exactly unknown. Brilliant experimental movie, entirely shot in first person perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI1Ovh5JnOE

riffmongous · 25-01-2022 10:02pm

Watch out for the Tarkovsky stuff, if you are not into slow, plodding, philosophical movies you won't like them at all (imagine thoughtful, extended shots of a stream flowing, or a man driving a car, where nothing else happens for 5 minutes).

25-01-2022 10:04pm

https://youtu.be/OgY0EJ0DWNU

Stalingrad is a classic!

El Gato De Negocios · 25-01-2022 11:23pm

If you are of a stronger disposition I'd recommend the back catalogue of Andrey Iskanov

Nails and Visions of Suffering are weird experimental horror, Philosophy of a Knife is a 4 hour tour de force about the infamous WWII Unit 731. Be warned, the last one is as extreme a movie as you are likely to ever see and doesn't shy away from the grim subject matter.

Ten of Swords · 26-01-2022 9:43pm

Another movie I'd highly recommend is Loveless

The director Andrey Zvyagintsev is out of favour with the Russian government right now so he had to make it with very little financing.

It's about a couple in Moscow who's relationship has turned bitter and toxic. They both have their own lives and new partners and are trying to sell their apartment so they can move on but they both neglect their son to the point that when he goes missing they don't notice straight away.

The movie is about them searching for him. Some hard scenes in it like the son listening to them argue over who will get custody of him and each says the other should take him, it's clear that neither want him (the boy crying soundlessly outside the bathroom door at 0.50 in the below clip is when he overhears them saying that, a heartbreaking scene)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6h5GuecUU-Q

fryup · 26-01-2022 11:29pm

are you expecting us to be invaded OP?

26-01-2022 11:30pm

Solaris(as mentioned by others above).

phelixoflaherty · 27-01-2022 12:26am

Leviathan

Ten of Swords · 27-01-2022 1:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118538287#Comment_118538287

Another great one, as I mentioned above Andrey Zvyagintsev fell out of favour with the government big time and it was because of Leviathan which deals with corruption in local government and the church.

neris · 27-01-2022 8:34pm

If you like war films 9th Company is like the Russian version of Apocalypse now in Afghanistan

neris · 27-01-2022 8:34pm

silverharp · 28-01-2022 12:30pm

cheers, great selection, plenty I have not come across before, keep them coming

tinytobe · 28-01-2022 12:34pm

I am interested in the movie "Teheran 43". The whole movie is on youtube, however I am looking for subtitles. Also, wondering, if the movie is or was available in French back in the days?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tpik8y7iuo

whisky_galore · 28-01-2022 12:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118538037#Comment_118538037

I for one welcome our new Oligarch overlords.

Capt'n Midnight · 28-01-2022 12:50pm

Russian Ark It's Night at the Museum in the most literal sense. Does exactly what it says on the tin. History lessons, beautiful rooms, costumes. Watch in highest resolution you can find.

Russian Ark is a 2002 film from Russia, directed by Alexander Sokurov.

The film follows an unseen narrator and his guest, a Frenchman named Custine, through the Russian State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg as they talk about the history of the city and the artifacts within the museum, bouncing around in time from the modern day to Joseph Stalin's era to Tsarist Russia and back again.

Russian Ark is something of a miracle in filmmaking: The entire film (around 93 minutes, excluding the credits) was shot using a single Steadicam in one continuous, uninterrupted take. When you realize that this film has over 2,000 actors in it, this feat becomes even more incredible

Capt'n Midnight · 28-01-2022 1:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118532378#Comment_118532378

Day Watch is part II so see Night Watch first. Zabulon is one of my favourite movie villains fun to imagine him as Putin and visa-versa

Old classics : Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible by Sergei Eisenstein you have to understand the times these films were made.

Alexander Nevsky was made just before the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed a non-aggression pact and so it got canned because it was anti-German. It got released soon afterwards.

fryup · 28-01-2022 1:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544782#Comment_118544782

well the women are sexy for one thing😎

rogber · 28-01-2022 10:48pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118537576#Comment_118537576

Loveless is an absolutely outstanding film, and Zvyagintsev's other work is decent too (Leviathan, for example. Though I prefer Loveless)

Otherwise I second Tarkovsky: Andrei Rublev, Mirror (greatest film ever for me!), Stalker. His post-Soviet work (Nostalghia, The Sacrifice) is less rewarding.

But these are films for arthouse film buffs only. Fans of mainstream 3-act dramas with neat resolutions will probably hate them

Soviet or Russian TV or Film recommendations

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