Sep 16 2026
Few films look quite like The Color of Pomegranates. Sergei Parajanov’s extraordinary work feels less like a conventional motion picture than an illuminated manuscript brought to life. Figures stand inside carefully arranged compositions. Books flutter in the wind. Pomegranates bleed their juice onto pale fabric. Carpets, fruit, lace, stone, water, animals, religious objects, and human …
Sep 15 2026
Every September 15 offers an opportunity to celebrate Yuri Norstein, the Soviet and Russian animator whose relatively small body of films has had an influence far beyond its size. Born on September 15, 1941, Norstein became one of the great artists of world animation through films that seem almost impossible to separate from dreams, memory, …
May 07 2025
Few war films are as physically harsh, morally unsettling, and spiritually charged as Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent. Completed in 1976 and released widely in 1977, the Soviet black-and-white drama follows two partisan fighters moving through the frozen countryside of Nazi-occupied Belarus during the Second World War. What begins as a dangerous search for food gradually …
Apr 30 2025
Few films treat memory quite like Enchanted Desna. Directed by Yuliya Solntseva and released in 1964, the film moves through childhood recollection, rural Ukrainian life, war, imagination, and the natural world without trying to separate them neatly. Past and present overlap. Memories become dreams, landscapes seem almost mythological, and ordinary experiences take on the scale …
Apr 29 2025
A flower appears on an empty road. A woman climbs a staircase and enters a quiet house. A key changes into a knife. A mysterious hooded figure walks away with a mirror where its face should be. The same moments begin happening again, only slightly differently each time. In just fourteen minutes, Meshes of the …
Apr 16 2025
Inspired after seeing this on Soviet Visuals and Folklore Film Fest‘s #SovietFilmWednesday, this was the first Soviet film I shared a little over four years ago, and it is still one of my favorites. What can I say, I love rain and cats, and the illustrations are beautiful, so this seemed like the perfect starting place for …
Jan 15 2025
Snowflakes swirl through the air as an old storyteller explains that each one is like a tiny white bee serving a queen who lives far to the north. Somewhere beyond the familiar city, past frozen rivers, forests, palaces, and vast stretches of snow, the Snow Queen travels through the winter sky in a glittering sleigh. …
Dec 25 2024
There are only a few hours left before midnight, the decorations are going up, musicians and dancers are rehearsing, and everyone at a Moscow House of Culture is preparing for a lively New Year’s Eve celebration. Then the new director arrives and decides the evening needs improvement. There should be fewer jokes, less dancing, more …
Dec 18 2024
There are fairy-tale movies that try to make magic look realistic, and then there is Jack Frost. Aleksandr Rou’s 1964 Soviet film seems perfectly happy to let magic look like magic. Forest spirits appear among the trees, a witch lives in a wonderfully crooked hut, a boastful young man suddenly acquires the head of a …
Dec 11 2024
Christmas Eve in the village of Dikanka is not going according to plan. A witch flies through the night sky, the Devil steals the moon, villagers stumble around in the darkness, unexpected visitors hide inside sacks, and a lovesick blacksmith is about to embark on an impossible journey to Saint Petersburg in search of a …
