Five Russian films to watch in 2015

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan is up for an Oscar next month, but what gems will Russia’s film industry give us this year? Anton Sazonov picks his favourites for The Calvert Journal

2014 was a strong year for Russian cinema on the international festival circuit, with victories for Andrei’s Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan at Cannes and Andrei Konchalovsky’s The Postman’s White Nights at Venice, among others.

However, as culture minister Vladimir Medinsky attempts to ensure that only thefilms he likes receive state finance, troubling times are ahead. Andrei Plakhov, one’s of Russia’s leading film critics, recently suggested in his Kommersantcolumn that 2014 could be the last prosperous year in modern Russian cinema.

Critic Anton Sazonov selects five films tipped for success this year, despite the gloomy forecasts.

Alexei German Jr is the son of the filmmaker Alexei German and the grandson of the famous Soviet writer Yuri German. Like his father, German Jr has always focussed on the past. His debut film, The Last Train, which received a special mention at Venice Film Festival, was set at the end of the Second World War. Garpastum was set just before the First World War, and Paper Soldier, which took two prizes at the Venice Film Festival, was set on the eve of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space. Under Electric Skies, however, is German Jr’s first film set entirely in the present day.

Plot: Six stories about very different people living in Russia. The film is about both those who grew up on Solzhenitsyn and the Apple generation; about the rich and the ordinary. It raises questions such as whether to emigrate or to stay in Russia.

What you need to know: Filming began in 2011 but was put on hold due to the death of Alexei German Sr. Before returning to his own film, German Jr first completed his father’s long-term project Hard To Be A God, which premiered last year at Rome Film Festival.

What the director says: “Of course, it would be silly to compare our work with that of a great like Fellini. But if I had to name a reference point, it would be La Dolce Vita, a film that shows a wide panorama of the Italy of its time. That was a film about life, about the sheer size of the universe in which we exist. Each of us is completely different; we each have our own truth, our own pain, and our own joy.”