The Russian Woodpecker
2015
80 min
en
As his country is gripped by revolution and war, a Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life and play his part in the revolution by revealing it.
Documentary
History
More Like This
Andrei Rublev
An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.
Add to Watchlist
The Cuckoo
September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Veikko managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.
Enemy at the Gates
A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII.
Alexander Nevsky
When German knights invade Russia, Prince Alexander Nevsky must rally his people to resist the formidable force. After the Teutonic soldiers take over an eastern Russian city, Alexander stages his stand at Novgorod, where a major battle is fought on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoe. While Alexander leads his outnumbered troops, two of their number, Vasili and Gavrilo, begin a contest of bravery to win the hand of a local maiden.
The Red Tent
Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.
Russian Ark
A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.
Reds
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
The Spacewalker
March 1965. In the heat of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR are competing for supremacy in space. What both superpowers aim for in this race, is to be the first to have a man walk in outer space. To accomplish that, no price is too high and no risk is too great. Now it’s up to the unlikely duo of a seasoned war veteran and a hot-headed test-pilot to fulfill this mission. Two men in a tiny spaceship, without proper testing, facing the complete unknown. They were supposed to do what no man has done before—and no man imagined what would happen next.
Europa Europa
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.
The Road Movie
Anything can happen on Russian roads and is precisely shot by the dashboard camera. Super-objective video registration grows into the strong image of Russian national character – with its permanent awaiting for the miracle and habitual approach to real dramas. A forest on fire as a symbol of Russian hell, a military tank at a car wash and car chase in the vicinity of Kremlin shot with a dashboard cam at the same time when Boris Nemtsov, the leader of political opposition, was shot dead near Kremlin. Dashboard cam depicts life in it’s purity as an unbiased observer.
Panfilov's 28 Men
USSR, Late November, 1941. Based on the account by reporter Vasiliy Koroteev that appeared in the Red Army's newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, shortly after the battle, this is the story of Panifilov's Twenty-Eight, a group of twenty-eight soldiers of the Red Army's 316th Rifle Division, under the command of General Ivan Panfilov, that stopped the advance on Moscow of a column of fifty-four Nazi tanks of the 11th Panzer Division for several days. Though armed only with standard issue Mosin-Nagant infantry rifles and DP and PM-M1910 machine guns, all useless against tanks, and with wholly inadequate RPG-40 anti-tank grenades and PTRD-41 anti-tank rifles, they fight tirelessly and defiantly, with uncommon bravery and unwavering dedication, to protect Moscow and their Motherland.
Chernobyl Heart
This Academy Award-winning documentary takes a look at children born after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster who have been born with a deteriorated heart condition.
Space Dogs
Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. A legend says that she returned to Earth as a ghost and still roams the streets of Moscow alongside her free-drifting descendants. While shooting this film, the directors little by little realised that they knew the street dogs only as part of our human world; they have never looked at humans as a part of the dogs’ world.
Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb
Documentary which follows the construction of a trailblazing 36,000-tonne steel structure to entomb the ruins of the nuclear power plant destroyed in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Disaster at Chernobyl
The explosion at Chernobyl was ten times worse than the Hiroshima bomb and was due to a combination of human error and imperfect technology. An account of the sixty critical minutes prior to the explosion of the nuclear power plant on the night of April 26, 1986.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes
Thirty-six years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in Soviet Ukraine, newly uncovered archival footage and recorded interviews with those who were present paint an emotional and gripping portrait of the extent and gravity of the disaster and the lengths to which the Soviet government went to cover up the incident, including the soldiers sent in to “liquidate” the damage. Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes is the full, unvarnished true story of what happened in one of the least understood tragedies of the twentieth century.
Crimea. As It Was
The film is a story about the officers, soldiers and seamen who did not betray their oath of loyalty to the people of Ukraine and their first hand accounts about Russia's invasion and annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. They continue to fulfill their military obligations on land, on sea and in the air today.
PQ17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster
Jeremy Clarkson tells the dramatic story of the Arctic convoys of the Second World War, from Russia to the freezing Arctic Ocean.
We Are from Kronstadt
In 1919, during the post-revolution Russian Civil War, a naval detachment (made up of communist Reds) defends the strategic city of Petrograd from the White Russian counterrevolutionary forces
Back to Chernobyl
The film tells the story of the Chernobyl accident through a mosaic of unique personal testimonies of its participants. The experiences of the difficult past and the sad results of the present recreate the full picture of the accident 30 years later.
