Aleksandr Sokurov

Unfolding over two days in 1924, the film depicts the dying Lenin, world revolutionary and father of the USSR, now powerless and isolated at his Gorki estate. Cared for by his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia, sister Maniasha, his German doctor and several attendants, ...  (more)

A man goes for a walk through the countryside with his dying mother.  (more)

An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat.  (more)

A surreal journey of a displaced spirit as he wanders in the interminable darkness through the temporal landscape of a quaint and isolated feudal-era fishing village. Guided by a series of faintly illuminated rooms, the wandering spirit comes upon ancient souls who ...  (more)

A documentary about the famous musician Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya.  (more)

In 1942 Bavaria, Eva is alone, when Adolf arrives with Josef, his wife Magda, and Martin to spend a couple of days without politics.  (more)

This bleak late soviet-era drama follows the career of Malyanov, a young medical school graduate who has been sent to work in Turkmenia. Here he runs into a hodge-podge of people of differing ethnicities, all of them victims of the government's earlier mania for ...  (more)

Elderly Aleksandra visits her Russian soldier grandson, Denis, at the Chechen war front, providing comfort as she tours his army. All the while, Denis ponders the reason for her unexpected appearance.  (more)

Originally aired on Russian television, this five-part semi-documentary series tells the story of a Russian naval commander in charge of an Arctic-based ship. The film provokes a meditation on solitude and isolation, while revealing the daily duties associated with ...  (more)

Five years in the making, based on six lengthy interviews filmed on six different locations in Saint Petersburg, we meet an outspoken artist who covers here his entire life and prolific career. The locations were Sokurov’s own favourites, where he felt at home.  (more)

In 1994, Alexander Sokurov accompanied Russian troops assigned to a frontier military post at the Tajikistan/Afghanistan border to film their experiences. While unnamed tribal forces occasionally engaged the troops in skirmishes, Sokurov’s haunting documentary ...  (more)

Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.  (more)

Yekaterinburg, Russia, July 17th, 1917. Czar Nicholas II Romanov and his entire family are brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks. This tragic event puts an end to the long dynasty that had ruled the country with an iron hand since the coronation of Michael I Romanov ...  (more)

The life stories of two elderly women living in a remote region of Kurdish Iraq.  (more)

Amateur actors read stories from a book describing the 900-day siege of Leningrad during World War II.  (more)

Making of Russian Ark, with on camera personal views by members of the cast and crew of the major film.  (more)

Interesting short documentary on young athletes in a Soviet ice skating program, some of whom are barely past toddler age. Kinetic and up close, the doc focuses on movement with music, eschewing interview and conversation, and mostly submerging political and social ...  (more)

Inspired by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Sokurov’s Save and Protect recalls the most crucial events of Emma’s decline and fall: affairs with the aristocratic Rodolphe and the student Leon, the humiliation that follows her husband’s botching of the operation on the ...  (more)

The story about the life of Shaliapin’s family, and an emotional generalization of the life of people in modern Leningrad.  (more)

A montage of Leningrad newsreel becomes a composite collage made up of documents-shots, divided in 16 parts, presenting the author's point of view on Russia and modern times. In the title, Sokurov appears as 'compiler' and the selection of the documents is just ...  (more)