Andrei Zvyagintsev’s modern masterpiece recasts the Biblical parable of Job as an epic, witheringly comic treatise on life in Putin’s Russia. On the bleakly beautiful Arctic coast, mechanic Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov) lives with his withdrawn second wife and restless son. When the land his family home stands on is targeted for development by the corrupt local mayor (Roman Madyanov), Kolya calls in help from Moscow in the form of lawyer friend Dima (Vladimir Vdovichenkov). But Kolya has underestimated the dark…

A careening ensemble comedy bursting at the seams with music and visual energy, Black Cat, White Cat is Emir Kusturica’s madcap tribute to the marginalised and dispossessed. The film follows the twisted romances and small-time schemes of a community of Roma who live from moment to moment on the banks of the Danube: rival patriarchs Grga (Sabri Sulejman) and Zarije (Zabit Memedov), hapless would-be hijacker Matko (Bajram Severdžan), manic gangster Dadan (Srđan Todorović). Building to a heady climax at a…

The final film from the great Andrei Tarkovsky is a moving meditation on faith and family that builds to one of the most famous climaxes in film history. Produced in exile in Sweden with a crew of Ingmar Bergman’s closest collaborators, The Sacrifice concerns Alexander (Erland Josephson), a wealthy lecturer in a lavish seaside manor. When World War III breaks out, Alexander makes a deal with God to spare his family – one that will have devastating consequences. This typically…

The first film that Andrei Tarkovsky made outside of the Soviet Union, Nostalghia is one of the great director’s most wistful and intimate features. Co-written with Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra, the story explores the sense of dislocation and spiritual unease experienced by a Soviet writer (Oleg Yankovsky) visiting Italy on a research trip, where he encounters a local eccentric (Erland Josephson) who harbours premonitions of the apocalypse. With his typical visual elegance and philosophical perspective, Tarkovsky mines his own predicament…