One of the most significant works of Georgian cinema, this anti-totalitarian film previously banned by the Soviets deals with its serious themes through a potent mix of acute symbolism and surrealist absurdity.
It gets dull after a while, but the context—a Soviet fabricated show trial ordered by Stalin to frame and prosecute ‘anti-communists’ in the eyes of the public—is still an eye-opening look at character assassination on a national, ideological level, nearly a century ago.
Edited entirely from restored archival footage of Stalin’s state funeral, this is a cinema of profound sadness and a towering achievement from one of the great screen chroniclers of Soviet history.
With wall-to-wall ethnic music and a highly-theatrical style, Parajanov’s last completed feature may be the most accessible of his most well-known folkloric works, best described as an experimental Fellini on steroids.
Told in numerous short vignettes, Parajanov’s late Georgian film retains the exotic, cultural elements that define his work, but occasionally struggles to find a balance between experimentation and storytelling.
Parajanov’s free-wheeling breakthrough film is a remarkable sensorial work that could hardly contain its dizzying energy—a showcase of a filmmaker at the height of his artistic expression.
As fascinating as it is arcane, this visually and aurally arresting work from Armenia defeats categorization, but is indescribably hypnotic.
Dovzhenko’s representative if propagandistic work of the Soviet silent era is visually poetic even if in retrospect its pro-Stalinist call for collectivism remains controversial.
An unusual and at times powerful Soviet WWII movie about a male sergeant leading a group of inexperienced women soldiers into a skirmish with marauding Nazis.
Tarkovsky’s vignette-style medieval epic is possibly the greatest ideological film about a psychologically-conflicted artist trying to understand the epoch he lives in.
