Aleksandr Sokurov

A rich woman accidently comes across a conversation on the phone about people talking about a murder.  (more)

The action in this lavishly produced film takes place at an oddly ark-shaped mansion during World War I, and in spirit (although not in story) it reflects the play which inspired it, the ferociously antiwar Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw. A large group of ...  (more)

A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.  (more)

This film was Sokurov's first feature at Lenfilm, roughly based on a short story by the contemporary Soviet writer Grigory Baklanov about the transitional period from power to subordinance.  (more)

Set in the early 1920s after the end of the Russian Civil War, Red Army soldier Nikita returns to his hometown to see his partner Lyuba, both of whom are scarred by the trauma of the Russian Empire of yesteryear.  (more)

Biographical film depicting Japanese Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) during the final days of World War II. The film is the third drama in director Aleksandr Sokurov's trilogy, which included Taurus about the Soviet Union's Vladimir Lenin and Moloch about Nazi Germany's ...  (more)

Faust inhabits an earthy, 19th-century world of primitive autopsies and medical rituals. He becomes obsessed with the beautiful Margarete and desperately turns to a physically grotesque moneylender to conjure their union.  (more)

The reburial of great Russian singer Feodor Chaliapin from Les Batignolles cemetery in Paris to Novo–Devitchye cemetery in Moscow. The daughters from Chaliapin’s second marriage travel to the Soviet Union for the ceremony.  (more)

A documentary film about the agricultural development in the region of Gorky: the everyday life in a sovkhoz, the building of a reservoir and of a greenhouse.  (more)

A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a ...  (more)

In "The Soviet Elegy" the long train of photos of the Soviet leaders, dead or alive, stops at the portrait of Yeltsin. At the time of shooting Yeltsin had fallen down from the assembly of the Communist Party deities, and participated in the earthly life through ...  (more)

Via the New York Times: "...a severely obscure meditation on pre-revolutionary Russia in the form of an encounter between a ghost from the past and the ghost's present-day guardian. In fact, the two characters seem to be the shade of Anton Chekhov and the young man ...  (more)

As with so many early films by Sokurov, this film has two dates: the first is the date of its creation (the film was then banned), the second is the date of the final edition and legal public screening. The film consists of German and Soviet archive footage of the ...  (more)

The manifestation and fireworks on the 1st of May, one of the ritual celebrations of Soviet times, as a gathering of tired participants of a mass scene falling into pieces without the director's orders and without any aims.  (more)

A documentary portrait of Miho Shimao, widow of renowned Japanese writer Toshio Shimao.  (more)

This intimately narrated journey from Russia to Rotterdam, via rail, road and Finnish ferry, is a melancholy meditation on divinity, time and place in art, purpose (or its lack) and the loneliness of the soul. Passing through misty snowscapes, half-glimpsed cities ...  (more)

The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn is a two-part Russian television documentary by Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The documentary shot in Solzhenitsyn’s home shows his everyday life and covers his reflections on Russian history and ...  (more)

A man tries to come to terms with his father's death and to deal with the mundane details of his burial in a society cut off from spirituality.  (more)

The life and work of the great Russian composer Dmitriy Shostakovich is presented in this documentary through rare images and audios from many archives, at one time censored by the Soviet government. A brief take on his life, from his transition as an early prodigy ...  (more)

In this dreamlike film, a nameless father and his son, Aleksei, live together in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Aleksei's mother has died and consequently the two have a very close relationship. When Aleksei acquires a girlfriend, she refuses to take a back seat ...  (more)