Tashkent: The End of an Era

Outliving Shakespeare

November 2025 •Armenian

In a decaying Soviet-era retirement home, a vibrant group of elders cling to life by staging Shakespeare. Yet loneliness lingers beyond the theater’s doors, until drama begins to blur with reality.

The Children of Leningradsky

August 2005 •Polish

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain an estimated four million children have found themselves living on the streets in the former countries of the Soviet Union. In the streets of Moscow alone there are over 30,000 surviving in this manner at the present time. The makers of the documentary film concentrated on a community of homeless children living hand to mouth in the Moscow train station Leningradsky. Eight-year-old Sasha, eleven-year-old Kristina, thirteen-year-old Misha and ten-year-old Andrej all dream of living in a communal home. They spend winter nights trying to stay warm by huddling together on hot water pipes and most of their days are spent begging. Andrej has found himself here because of disagreements with his family. Kristina was driven into this way of life by the hatred of her stepmother and twelve-year-old Roma by the regular beatings he received from his constantly drunk father. "When it is worst, we try to make money for food by prostitution," admits ...

Misha

Invalid date •English

The tragic story of the greatest soccer player the most have never heard of.

Extinction

July 2018 •Portuguese

The end of the Cold War did not bring about a definitive thaw in the former republics of the Soviet Union, so that today there are several frozen conflicts, unresolved for decades, in that vast territory. As in Transnistria, an unrecognized state, seceded from Moldova since 1990. Kolja is a silent witness of how borders and bureaucracy shape the lives of citizens, finally forced to lose their identity.

Russia vs. Russia

February 2022 •French

More than twenty years after Vladimir Putin came to supreme power in Russia on May 7, 2000, Russian society is deeply divided. A young, modern generation opposes the growing repression by the regime, which still retains the support of many members of previous generations. Who are these ordinary citizens who dream of living in a different Russia? What price will they have to pay to achieve the freedom and justice they so desire?

Yakutia — Between The Worlds

September 2024 •Russian

A documentary road movie. Traveling across his homeland, the filmmaker explores what Yakut cinema is, and what it means to the Sakha people and to himself.

Aral, Fishing in an Invisible Sea

June 2004 •Uzbek

A documentary film about the three remaining generations of fishermen in the Aral Sea-- Their everyday struggle to survive in one of the most dire and inhospitable places on the planet.

Uzbek Madonna

October 2024 •English

Documentary highlighting clips and providing historical context to surviving silent films from Uzbekistan.

The Wall

January 1991 •Latvian

A fragment of the Berlin Wall in the centre of Riga.

Basements on Dybenko Street

May 2004 •Russian

In the Russian city of St. Petersburg, in the Dybenko basements, drug addict children survive by taking drugs. This is an attempt to look into this terrible world from the inside.

When the Water Stops Flowing

January 2026 •English

Jonathan Stavleu explores, in a stream-of-consciousness video essay, the relationship people have with water and what happens when access to it is taken away. For this work, he examines anecdotal histories he has heard from Estonians, as well as stories from his own family history in the Netherlands, weaving them together into a journal-like narrative.

Abu Raykhan Biruni

August 1974 •Uzbek

A biographical film about one of the greatest Medieval scientists and scholars, Al-Biruni.

Grandmother of Russian Feminism

January 2007 •Russian

Portrait of a typical European feminist - Olga Lipovskaya (1954-2021), journalist, translator, poet, founder of the women's non-profit organization St. Petersburg Center for Gender Issues (an educational and resource center for women and women's organizations), editor of the samizdat magazine Women's Reading.

To Live and to Die in Samarkand

January 2007 •Russian

Having gone to Samarkand in search of traces of colonial culture, of which there were quite a few left there, having carefully photographed them, we suddenly discovered that it was not the dead buildings that were much more interesting, but the living carriers of this very colonial culture. The result is a film about people who live on the ruins of an empire.

Neither live nor die in Tashkent

March 2015 •Russian

Chronicles of the cultural life of Tashkent (2007 – 2015). From the murder of Mark Weil to the wedding of Alisher Usmanov. Tashkent Biennale, apartment buildings, video art festival, conversations about nothing, amateur performances and operational shooting, advertising and much more. Tashkent, which no longer exists, just as these people are no longer in it.

Live and live in Fergana

January 2009 •Russian

About Russians living in Fergana, why they are not going to leave and what they see as the meaning of their presence on the land of Turkestan

Father, Developed

December 2024 •Georgian

After she discovers canisters of undeveloped film shot by her late father, Elene sets out on a journey to collaborate with him on a special project. Between the earth and the land of the dead, a darkroom becomes the only dimension where the paths of a father and a daughter can cross.

Kirgistan - Hochgebirgsland voller Schätze

December 2018 •German

History Behind The Screen. 35 mm

January 2018 •Latvian

Some of the most iconic images in Latvian visual history were taken 30 years ago, when the so-called Singing Revolution took place. This documentary that includes well-known and previously unseen 35 mm footage, is about those who took these shots, told in their own voices, their own emotions and memories.

Eksperiment Katja

October 2020 •Russian

Russian-speaking Katja was born in 1992 in the Estonian city of Narva, not far from the Russian border. She represents the entire generation of the 1990s, which sees itself as a house with no address or railway tracks leading nowhere. In the ruins of the Soviet Union, she searches for her national identity and learns to breathe freedom.