A polar station on a desolate island in the Arctic Ocean. Sergei, a seasoned meteorologist, and Pavel, a recent college graduate, are spending months in complete isolation on the once ...
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A widowed aeronautics engineer, who has lost his job, travels with his son hopping freight trains from Moscow to Koktebel, a town by the Black Sea, to start a new life with the father's ... See full summary »
Directors:
Boris Khlebnikov,
Aleksey Popogrebskiy
Stars:
Gleb Puskepalis,
Igor Chernevich,
Evgeniy Sytyy
Siberia. Late autumn. In taiga, in the deserted village there lives an old man Ivan & his seven-year-old grandson Leshia. A pack of feral dogs devours everything alive in the neighborhood. ... See full summary »
The film represents life in a godforsaken Russian village. The only way to reach the mainland is to cross the lake by boat and a postman became the only connection with the outside world. A... See full summary »
Director:
Andrey Konchalovskiy
Stars:
Aleksey Tryapitsyn,
Irina Ermolova,
Timur Bondarenko
Victor Sluzhkin signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student ... See full summary »
Director:
Aleksandr Veledinskiy
Stars:
Konstantin Khabenskiy,
Elena Lyadova,
Aleksandr Robak
Adequacy is relative. Vitalik, the main character of the movie, seems to be pretty normal. With a respectable office job, a comfy little dwelling and a personal couch doctor, Vitalik looks ... See full summary »
Director:
Roman Karimov
Stars:
Ilya Lyubimov,
Ingrid Olerinskaya,
Evgeniy Tsyganov
Dima Nikitin is an ordinary honest plumber who suddenly decides to face the corrupt system of local politics in order to save the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dormitory, which is about to collapse.
A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.
Somewhere in Northern Russia in a small Russian Orthodox monastery lives an unusual man whose bizarre conduct confuses his fellow monks, while others who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future.
Director:
Pavel Lungin
Stars:
Pyotr Mamonov,
Viktor Sukhorukov,
Dmitriy Dyuzhev
The beauty of this movie is that you, as the reader of the subtitles, are the only one who knows what is going on. The woman and the two men all speak different languages. It is a comedy of errors up until the end.
Director:
Aleksandr Rogozhkin
Stars:
Anni-Kristiina Juuso,
Ville Haapasalo,
Viktor Bychkov
Kind and lazy Jenya comes to Moscow from small village in Belarus for earnings... Criminal incident unexpectedly separates Jenya from companions and leaves him alone without money and ... See full summary »
Director:
Boris Khlebnikov
Stars:
Evgeniy Sytyy,
Sergey Dreyden,
Anna Mikhalkova
A polar station on a desolate island in the Arctic Ocean. Sergei, a seasoned meteorologist, and Pavel, a recent college graduate, are spending months in complete isolation on the once strategic research base. Pavel receives an important radio message and is still trying to find the right moment to tell Sergei, when fear, lies and suspicions start poisoning the atmosphere...Written by
Koktebel Film Company
Having watched this movie on a flight I am going to steer clear of commenting on what appeared to be some amazing cinematography.
With a sparse cast and a sparse setting this films works hard on the subtleties and isolation of the main characters. The monotony, the boredom, the sense of duty and the age old story of the older experienced man and the younger upstart who doesn't appreciate the ways of old.
Grigoriy Dobrygin as Pasha is incredible in delivering the essence and fundamentals of the story. What makes this movie thrilling and scary at the same time is that, in such isolation, everything that could possibly scare you in such a situation is explored or alluded to so you never know what could happen because anything could happen. Within this context an important message is received Without spoiling the movie, one could say that we cannot control how people react to things anymore than we can control nature itself. And sometimes to try and prevent bad things happening can be the worst choice but it is always the human choice.
The script is extremely tight and though the dialogue is somewhat monosyllabic and sparse it all adds to the tension, (and makes it easier if you are not watching it in Russian and dislike subtitles) I cannot imagine how a movie as good as this could ever be made in Hollywood. Where, for example, someones expressions alone could take up 5 minutes of film and still have you on the edge of your seat. Even Hitchcock would have learned a lot from the art of suspense after watching this movie.
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Having watched this movie on a flight I am going to steer clear of commenting on what appeared to be some amazing cinematography.
With a sparse cast and a sparse setting this films works hard on the subtleties and isolation of the main characters. The monotony, the boredom, the sense of duty and the age old story of the older experienced man and the younger upstart who doesn't appreciate the ways of old.
Grigoriy Dobrygin as Pasha is incredible in delivering the essence and fundamentals of the story. What makes this movie thrilling and scary at the same time is that, in such isolation, everything that could possibly scare you in such a situation is explored or alluded to so you never know what could happen because anything could happen. Within this context an important message is received Without spoiling the movie, one could say that we cannot control how people react to things anymore than we can control nature itself. And sometimes to try and prevent bad things happening can be the worst choice but it is always the human choice.
The script is extremely tight and though the dialogue is somewhat monosyllabic and sparse it all adds to the tension, (and makes it easier if you are not watching it in Russian and dislike subtitles) I cannot imagine how a movie as good as this could ever be made in Hollywood. Where, for example, someones expressions alone could take up 5 minutes of film and still have you on the edge of your seat. Even Hitchcock would have learned a lot from the art of suspense after watching this movie.