The Klassiki Podcast

That’s a wrap on season seven of the podcast. As always, thank you for listening along. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss us when we return for season eight in the autumn. And please, leave us a five-star rating and share the show far and wide so we can continue to grow. Thank you.  The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival has just come to a close. Every year, this resort town on the shores of Lake Maggiore hosts to one of the world’s most rewarding festivals, balancing arthouse favourites with a ready supply of lesser-known talent. Friend of the show Sona Karapoghosyan – critic and programmer for Armenia’s Golden Apricot Film Festival – has been back in Locarno this year, serving as a member of the FIPRESCI Jury for the international competition. Sam caught up with her before the award winners were announced to chat about some East European and Caucasian titles from the programme – including what turned out to be the top prize winner, with the Golden Leopard going to Romanian stalwart Florin Șerban’s You Don’t Belong Here. Also up for discussion are I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, Isabelle Stever’s transgender romance from wartime Ukraine, and Demons, Natalka Vorozhbyt’s darkly supernatural Russia-Ukraine allegory. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The forest is one of the prevailing symbols of Russia and its former imperial holdings: from the Baltic to the taiga to the Pacific. But how has the forest informed Russia’s sense of itself and its place in the world? This is the question at the heart of Sophie Pinkham’s new book, The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires: a cultural and environmental history about the role of the forest in making and resisting the Russian and Soviet states, stretching from the Bronze Age to the war on Ukraine.  This week, Sam invites Sophie onto the pod to discuss the forest on film. How have filmmakers related to the Russian forest and what do their films tell us about Russian and Soviet colonialism and environmentalism? Sam and Sophie explore all this, as well as pagans, geologists, and partisans, with reference to cinematic classics including Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, and Larisa Shepitko.  Make sure to check out Sophie Pinkham’s book The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Among his many achievements, the Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins is perhaps best known for his sprawling documentaries charting the history of cinema: The Story of Film: An Odyssey, originally released in 2011, and Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, from 2019. Now, Mark is back with a third entry in this pantheon: The Story of Documentary Film. Like its predecessors, it's an epic undertaking, with 16 hour-long chapters running from the 19th century to the present day and ranging all across the globe, examining the political, social, and aesthetic factors that have shaped documentary, with examples ranging from the canonical to the deliciously obscure.  This week, host Sam Goff sits down with Mark for a fittingly wide-ranging conversation about how he approaches these long-form odysseys, his personal experiences in Eastern Europe, from visiting Moscow during perestroika to watching films in bomb shelters in Sarajevo, and some of his favourite filmmakers from the region. Explore Klassiki’s collection of documentary titles here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Long time listeners of the show will be familiar with the film historian Ian Christie, who’s joined us to discuss topics ranging from Aleksandr Sokurov to Powell and Pressburger, the Soviet avant-garde to The Saragossa Manuscript. His new book, The Most Important Art: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Russian and Soviet Cinema, collects writings and interviews from decades of pioneering work on subjects ranging from the silent era to contemporary figures like Andrei Zvyagintsev.  Ian spent the final years of the Soviet era travelling back and forth to the USSR, witnessing the social and cultural revolution that was unfolding and befriending many of the leading figures in the film industry. This week, host Sam Goff invites Ian back on the pod to reflect on those experiences and to share his memories of encounters with artists like Andrei Tarkovsky, Kira Muratova, Elem Klimov, and many more.  The Most Important Art: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Russian and Soviet Cinema is on sale now from Sticking Place Books.  Klassiki subscribers can explore a special watchlist featuring many of the films that Ian discusses on this episode here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Renowned in his native Georgia as one of the nation’s greatest filmmakers, Otar Iosseliani spent the majority of his career in his adoptive home of France after emigrating in the early eighties. The news that Cinema Guild will be releasing a slate of restorations has occasioned an extensive retrospective in New York, where audiences can acquaint themselves with the director’s bustling long takes, mordant satire, and anarchic sympathy for the drunks, losers, and misfits of both Soviet communism and western capitalism. Otar Iosseliani: Fables of Modern Life opens this week at Asia Society before heading over to Metrograph, and we’re delighted to say that Klassiki will be co-presenting the programme at both venues.  This week, host Sam Goff speaks with Edo Choi, Film Programmer at Metrogaph, and Inney Prakash, Curator of Film at Asia Society, about the retrospective and Iosseliani’s unique cinematic sensibility, which bears comparison with directors from Jacques Tati to Jean-Luc Godard, and even the Safdie Brothers.  Fables of Modern Life kicks off at Asia Society on 24 and 25 July, then continues at Metrograph from the 8 to the 23 August. Klassiki subscribers can watch a double bill of Iosseliani titles on the site from this Thursday 23: his debut feature Falling Leaves, and the French farce Farewell, Home Sweet Home.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We have a bonus episode for you this week. Host Sam is in Yerevan, Armenia, attending the Golden Apricot International Film Festival – always a highlight of the year for us here at Klassiki. The festival is renowned for its championing of films from the Caucasus and Near East, and for its engagement with the Armenian diaspora.  Sam took the opportunity to sit down with Savina Petkova and Flavia Dima –two of our favourite critics (and Klassiki Podcast alumni) – to discuss some of the films they’ve caught so far, including Marlene Edoyan’s A Fire There, Comes Chahbazian’s Here, Elsewhere, and Inna Sahakyan’s Outliving Shakespeare, as well as Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cannes-approved Fatherland, starring Sandra Hüller. You can read a selection of reviews from Golden Apricot’s Critics’ Campus here. We’ll be publishing more from Yerevan on the Journal over the next few days, so keep your eyes peeled. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu. The most elusive of the founding fathers of the Romanian New Wave, Porumboiu’s postmodern comedies play on questions of language and identity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his crime dramas, Police Adjective and The Whistlers, where genre thrills undergo playful revisions to the point of absurdity. As Porumboiu completes work on his first feature in seven years, there’s never been a better time to take a closer look at his deceptively playful films. Read the original piece here and watch Porumboiu’s gangster film The Whistlers on Klassiki for the next month, until 13 August only.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’re a few weeks into season seven, so it’s about time to open up the Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of the Klassiki catalogue. For this edition, I spoke with one of our favourite critics, Botagoz Koilybayeva, who’s written for the Klassiki Journal among many other outlets. As always, we asked Botagoz to pick a film from our library that she hadn't seen before, watch it, then jump on a call to discuss. Her pick was Tough Kids, the 1983 social drama about teen delinquency and redemption by the sorely underrated Soviet director Dinara Asanova.  Botagoz and host Sam Goff get into Asanova’s tragically short career and her controversial working methods, as well as the social and emotional undercurrents of her filmography.  Watch along with us on Klassiki now! And make sure to check out Botagoz’s writing on Ali Khamraev and the politics of contemporary Kazakh film. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Russian documentary has been in the limelight following the Oscar win for Mr Nobody Against Putin earlier this year. The film consists of footage covertly shot by videographer Pasha Talankin inside the school where he worked, capturing how the militarisation of the modern Russian state makes itself felt in the classroom. Mr Nobody raises important questions about the ethical and logistical challenges of non-fiction filmmaking in wartime Russia – but its profile risks overshadowing a rich documentary tradition. In their new edited volume The New Russian Documentary: Reclaiming Reality in the Age of Authoritarianism, scholars Masha Shpolberg (Bard College) and Anastasia Kostina (Columbia) argue that in the face of growing repression, the 21st century has actually seen a boom in Russian non-fiction cinema: from new film schools and festivals to formal experimentation and theoretical debates, inspired by a desire for objectivity in the face of media manipulation from an increasingly coercive regime. This week, host Sam Goff welcomes Masha and Anastasia onto the pod to discuss the history and the role of documentary film in Putin’s Russia. Check out Masha’s and Anastasia’s book here.  Explore our collection of contemporary Russian documentaries here.   Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Last week saw the 124th anniversary of Boris Barnet, one of the most influential filmmakers of the Soviet Union. In Europe, Barnet’s lyrical and humanistic cinema has long been canonised – but in the English-speaking world, he was until recently a more acquired taste. That’s changed in recent years: there have been major retrospectives in Chicago and New York, and our friends at Outskirts Magazine (which is named after one of Barnet’s most beloved pictures) published a fantastic dossier on his work in their first issue.  To understand this shift, this week host Sam Goff speaks with Boris Nelepo, who listeners might remember from our episode last year on Marlen Khutsiev. Boris is a programmer and critic from Moscow now based in Lisbon, where he is Co-Head of programming at the DocLisboa International Film Festival. Sam and Boris take on the long, difficult sweep of Barnet’s career, which stretched from silent comedies to wartime thrillers and sixties road movies, touching on the utopian spirit of his films and the loneliness that contributed to his tragic early death from suicide in 1965. Watch Boris Barnet’s films Girl with a Hatbox and Outskirts on Klassiki now.  Read Boris Nelepo’s writing on Barnet here.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Welcome back to season seven of the Klassiki Podcast! We’ve got ten more episodes coming up for you on the past and present of eastern European film, including some reporting from the summer festival circuit and a very exciting screening series coming up for our American friends. Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss an episode.  One of the highlights of last month’s Cannes festival was the long-awaited return of German filmmaker Valeska Grisebach, who took home the Jury Prize for The Dreamed Adventure, which arrives nine years after her previous feature Western. The Dreamed Adventure sees the director return to Bulgaria, Grisebach crafting a brilliant subversion of her genre influences with the story of Veska, a female archaeologist who gets tangled in the criminal underworld of her small border town.  Host Sam Goff sits down with Valeska Grisebach to discuss her attachment to Bulgaria, her understanding of gender and genre, and the incredible real life stories that informed her unique take on the gangster film. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’ve reached the end of season six. Thank you to all our subscribers and listeners old and new. We’ll be back in the summer – but in the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and please leave us a review and a five-star rating. Thank you! For this final episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on one of the masterpieces of Polish cinema: Krzysztof Kieślowski’s monumental Dekalog. Ten hour-long films inspired by the Ten Commandments, all set in the same Warsaw tower block complex, this intimate epic of everyday life arrived at the end of the communist era and asked penetrating questions about the spiritual and material direction of Polish society as transformation loomed. Read the original piece here and watch Kieślowski’s Dekalog spin-off feature A Short Film about Love on Klassiki now.  Find out more about Poland in the eighties with our companion piece and explore Kieślowski’s career here. Get in touch: [email protected]  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week, cinema audiences in London are getting the rare chance to see a selection of films by the great Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian as part of the Open City Documentary Festival. Pelechian’s work, described by Serge Daney as “a missing link in the true history of the cinema”, cuts across documentary, fiction, and essay film, exploring national and natural history, socialist labour, biblical symbolism, and technological progress and catastrophe.  The Pelechian programme at Open City has been put together by an old friend of Klassiki: Sona Karapoghosyan, a program curator at Yerevan’s Golden Apricot Film Festival. So this week, host Sam Goff asked Sona to join him in introducing the poetic world of Pelechian’s films. Interstitial Cinema: the films of Artavazd Pelechian, screens over two consecutive nights this week at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London: Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th. Find all the information you need, book tickets, and read an essay by Sona here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

It’s been a while since we opened up the Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of Klassiki’s ever-expanding catalogue. We’re putting that right this week with a brand new guest: critic, programmer, and teacher Savina Petkova. As always, we asked Savina to pick a film from our library that she hadn't seen before, watch it, then jump on a call to discuss. Her pick was Getting to Know the Big Wide World, the 1978 construction site romance by the inimitable Kira Muratova.  Savina and host Sam Goff find plenty to admire in Muratova’s unique approach to love triangles, cinematic mirrors, and the beauty of the building site.  Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Subscribers can also check out Muratova’s early films Brief Encounters and The Long Farewell on the site. You can find more from Savina here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Last week we launched the latest edition of Klassiki Picks, our series of watchlists curated by our friends in the world of cinema and eastern Europe. In this hot seat this time around is British filmmaker Peter Strickland, director of The Duke of Burgundy, Berberian Sound Studio, and In Fabric, among other weird and wonderful titles. Peter has a special link to the world of Eastern European film: after a number of years living in Slovakia and Hungary, he burst onto the international stage in 2009 with his feature debut Katalin Varga, shot in Transylvania on a tiny, self-financed budget. Peter has curated a selection of five titles for Klassiki that reflect his personal and professional history in the region. He sits down with host Sam Goff to talk about his time living and working in Slovakia and Hungary, and his picks, which include Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, the children’s animations of Czech trailblazer Hermína Týrlová, Péter Gothár’s cult Hungarian satire The Outpost, and two Slovak films that explore the place of the church in authoritarian regimes: Štefan Uher’s New Wave gem The Organ, and Ivan Ostrochovský’s chilly political parable Servants. Make sure to explore Peter’s Klassiki Picks, available to subscribers until 23 April.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

When it comes to Central and Eastern European film, few movements loom larger than the Czechoslovak New Wave. Emerging in a period of political liberalisation and protest, the New Wave produced formally and politically audacious films before the so-called Prague Spring was crushed by a Soviet invasion in 1968. 2026 marks 60 years since the release of canonical films like Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, Jiří Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains, and Jan Němec’s A Report on the Party and Guests.  But what exactly does the New Wave mean after all this time? Which names get left out of the conversation? What happened after the Prague Spring? And what about the often overlooked Slovak aspect of this Czechoslovak phenomenon?  To try and answer some of these questions, this week host Sam Goff speaks with Prague-based writer and programmer Christopher Small, co-founder and co-editor of the wonderful Outskirts Film Magazine, and an editor and writer for the Locarno Film Festival. Make sure to check out Outskirts Film Magazine and Podcast. Explore Klassiki’s collection of Czech and Slovak titles here. Over on the Journal, we’ve got you covered for more writing on the New Wave, Věra Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová, and Juraj Herz. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week sees the return of one of the highlights of London’s cinematic calendar: BFI Flare, the largest LGBTQ+ film festival in Europe. One of the world premieres this year is To Dance is to Resist, a new documentary from German filmmaker and musician Julian Lautenbacher. Julian has spent five years travelling to Ukraine to document the personal and professional lives of Jay and Vol’demar, dancers in Kyiv’s vibrant underground queer club scene. His film captures a couple and a community finding their way through wartime hardship, juxtaposing striking scenes of dance performance with domestic portraits and visions of a capital city under attack.   Ahead of the festival, host Sam Goff spoke with Julian about his experiences working in Kyiv, the idea of dance culture as a form of resistance during invasion, and the cultural connections and contrasts between Germany and Ukraine.  Get tickets for screenings of To Dance is to Resist on 28 and 29 March here. BFI Flare runs from 18-29 March. Explore the festival programme here. Explore Klassiki’s queer film collection here.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For many cinephiles, the Central Asian states remain something of a blind spot. A case in point is Uzbekistan, whose film industry stretches back to the silent era, but which rarely comes on our radar in the Anglophone world.  To provide some insight into what it’s like to do the work in this part of the world, this week host Sam Goff speaks with Julia Shaginurova. Julia, together with her partner Michael Borodin, is at the heart of efforts to build an independent film culture in Uzbekistan. She’s a producer, writer, and advocate and a co-founder of the Tashkent Film School. She also helps to run Women Watch Uzbekistan, a programme to encourage female filmmakers in the country.  Julia tells us about the challenges and opportunities for independent filmmakers and audiences in Uzbekistan, from funding to censorship and more, as well as the situation in Central Asia more broadly. Find out more about the Tashkent Film School here. Watch Michael Borodin’s film Convenience Store on Klassiki now and read our interview with the director here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week sees the one hundredth birthday of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema. Until 26 March, Klassiki subscribers can watch Wajda’s epochal double header Man of Marble and Man of Iron, about the history of worker resistance in communist Poland, alongside two of his great literary adaptations: Siberian Lady Macbeth and The Promised Land.  With a career running from the 1950s until the 2010s, it can be hard to know where to start with Wajda – but one thread running throughout his filmography is an exploration of Poland’s troubled modern history: from the 19th century through the trauma of the war and the communist era that followed. To dig a little deeper into Andrzej Wajda’s history lessons, host Sam Goff is joined once again by Owen Hatherley – Eastern European architecture expert and Polish film and history aficionado – to discuss some of Wajda’s recurring themes and the highs (and lows) of his national history on film. Watch our two-part Wajda tribute: Men of History and Literature on Film. Read our essay on Wajda’s career and check out a watchlist of his films on the Klassiki Journal.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for a profile of the Ukrainian filmmaker Roman Bondarchuk, whose deadpan, absurdist comedies cut through the myth-making around his country by investigating the “no man’s land” of his native Kherson region. Bondarchuk’s recent feature The Editorial Office was completed during the full-scale invasion by Russia and speaks with particular clarity to the challenges that Ukraine was facing before the war and will face after it. Read the original piece here and watch Bondarchuk’s 2018 comedy Volcano on Klassiki now. Get in touch: [email protected]  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Welcome to season six of the Klassiki Podcast! We’re kicking things off by celebrating one of our favourites: Sergei Parajanov. Our new collection Perspectives on Parajanov, available now for subscribers, features the great man’s final two features, The Legend of Suram Fortress and Ashik Kerib. We’re presenting the films alongside Zara Jian’s revelatory documentary, I Will Revenge this World with Love – S. Paradjanov (2024). Against the backdrop of the war on Ukraine and ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, Zara’s film explores the example of artistic and political courage that Parajanov set for the modern world.  To kick off the season, Zara Jian joins host Sam Goff to discuss the eternal appeal of Parajanov, where his cosmopolitan work sits in a nationalist world, and her personal response to his late-career masterpieces.  Watch I Will Revenge this World with Love - S. Paradjanov on Klassiki until 12 March as part of our collection Perspectives on Parajanov.  Listen to our episode on Parajanov’s centenary here. Read Daniel Bird’s take on Parajanov’s groundbreaking short Hakob Hovnatanyan here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’ve reached the end of season 5! Thank you to everyone for listening along. We’ll be back in 2026, but for now, happy holidays and speak to you soon. To close out the season, we’re returning to the ever-expanding archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal and an essay on one of the great lost talents of the Soviet studio system. Aleksandr Askoldov only completed one feature film in his career, 1967’s excoriating anti-war drama Commissar, before falling foul of the censors and disappearing into obscurity. But the film remains a landmark for its deconstruction of Soviet mythology and its treatment of the USSR’s Jewish population. Klassiki favourite, writer and researcher Alisa Goruleva explores how Askoldov ended up on the wrong side of the censors but the right side of history. Read the original piece here and watch Commissar on Klassiki now. Get in touch: [email protected]  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Friend of the show Alisa Goruleva is back on the pod this week for the latest edition of the Kino Club, our watch-a-long exploration of Klassiki’s film catalogue. As always, host Sam Goff set Alisa the task of picking a title from our library that she hadn’t seen before to discuss. Her choice this time around was very fitting: An Unusual Exhibition, the 1968 comedy of artistic frustration by the great Georgian filmmaker Eldar Shengelaia, who sadly passed away in August of this year.  Alisa and Sam pay tribute to Shengelaia before exploring the film’s strange blend of tones, its disorienting narrative style, and its treatment of the eternal figure of the downtrodden artist.  Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Subscribers will find a host of bonus materials that we put together as part of our celebration of Shengelaia’s 90th birthday a few years ago – including an interview with the great man himself. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Listeners may remember our conversation earlier this year with Michael Brooke celebrating the centenary of Wojciech Has – one of Poland’s greatest and most misunderstood directors. We’re taking one last opportunity to honour Has’s hundredth anniversary year: right now until Christmas Day, subscribers can enjoy a restored version of his mind-bending masterpiece The Saragossa Manuscript. Adapted from a founding classic of Polish literature, the film presents a surreal odyssey across time and space that nests stories within stories to baffling and hypnotic effect.  To unpack the film, Sam invited old friend of the show, film writer and historian Ian Christie, to join him in deciphering the Manuscript: from the source novel to the film’s daring formal tricks, its place in sixties counterculture, its long critical re-evaluation, and its profound influence on everyone from Luis Buñuel to David Lynch.  Watch The Saragossa Manuscript on Klassiki until 25th December.  Listen to our episode on the life and times of Wojciech Has here. Read Daniel Bird’s essay on Has’s surreal literary adaptations here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for a profile of the great Romanian director Lucian Pintilie, whose provocative, modernist work bridges the gap between communist-era filmmaking and the New Wave that has defined Romanian cinema in the 21st century. Subject to censorship and exile, Pintilie returned to his homeland in the 1990s to cement his legacy and influence a new generation of directors. Read the original piece here and make sure to check out Pintilie’s classic satire Reconstruction as well as our collection of classic Romanian titles. Get in touch: [email protected]  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.  

Central Asia remains a great blindspot for many Western cinephiles – so we were thrilled to hear about an upcoming season in New York, hosted by the Asia Society in partnership with Anthology Film Archives. Eastern Notions is a celebration of the great Uzbek director Ali Khamraev, one of the true masters of Central Asian cinema, with more than 20 features in a career stretching back to the 1960s. Running from 20-23 November, the season highlights five of Khamraev’s fiction films, with the great man making a rare appearance in the States to attend in person. To mark the occasion, host Sam Goff spoke with the season’s curator Inney Prakash about Khamraev’s diverse body of work, his relationship with more famous Soviet icons like Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov, and the question of curating Central Asian film.  Listeners in New York, don’t miss out: Eastern Notions runs from 20-23 November at Asia Society and Anthology Film Archives.  Read our 2021 interview with Ali Khamraev for further insight into his long and fruitful career.  Klassiki subscribers can watch Khamraev’s poetic and autobiographical film I Remember You on the site now. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

14 years after her previous feature, Julia Loktev is back with a monumental new documentary project. My Undesirable Friends is her collective portrait of some of the last independent journalists working in Russia in the run-up to, and aftermath of, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Part One, titled Last Air in Moscow, was shot entirely on iPhone during Loktev’s trips to the Russian capital. Over more than five immersive hours, we follow journalists from the TV channel Rain and other oppositional outlets as they struggle to keep pace with Russia’s descent into the abyss, from labelling journalists as “foreign agents” to outright assault and arrest. Host Sam Goff sat down with Julia to find out how the film evolved over time, the relationship between her work in fiction and documentary, and where she’s at with Part Two of the project, entitled Exile, which follows our journalist protagonists after they are forced to flee Russia. Last Air in Moscow is currently screening in select locations across the US. Find your nearest screening here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week, we’re reopening the Klassiki Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of Klassiki’s ever-expanding catalogue. In the hot seat this time around is Ally Pitts, host of the long-running Russian and Soviet Movies Podcast and confirmed Eastern European film aficionado. Ally’s choice comes from Azerbaijan: Orkhan Aghazadeh’s 2024 documentary The Return of the Projectionist, a portrait of cinephilia and friendship across generations.  Ally and host Sam Goff get into Aghazadeh’s playful blend of observation and performance, the state of cinema in the post-Soviet space, and how to make a nostalgic film without being sentimental.   Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Subscribers will also find our exclusive video interview with Aghazadeh. Check out Ally’s podcast here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

As every film fan knows, October is horror season. And while eastern Europe these days is full of horror filmmakers who can mix it with the best of them, this wasn’t always the case: under communism, the genre often struggled to get past state censors. But the idea that there was no horror produced behind the Iron Curtain is a myth. There was in fact a rich tradition in the sixties and seventies, drawing on national folklore, literary sources, and the region’s traumatic recent history to chilling effect. On Klassiki, you can currently stream a Halloween double header of cult classic Soviet films. Viy, by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov, is famous among genre fans as the greatest of all Soviet horror titles, while Valeri Rubinchik’s The Savage Hunt of King Stakh is a criminally under-seen gothic gem from Belarus.  In the spirit of the season, this week Sam speaks with Miriam Balanescu, a film writer and critic with a special interest in all things ghoulish. They discussed the horror history of countries like Poland and Czechia, the political subtext of genre filmmaking under communism, and what ‘folk horror’ meant in the Soviet context.  Don’t miss our Halloween double header, now showing on Klassiki. Get in touch: [email protected]  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The 69th edition of the London Film Festival has just rolled through the capital’s cinemas, bringing a host of filmmaking talents in its wake. Sam headed down to the festival press circuit to speak to two directors in town with their latest films. First we hear from North Macedonia’s Teona Strugar Mitevska, who has been a shining light of Balkan filmmaking for over 20 years. Her latest film is perhaps her most ambitious yet: Mother, a punkish take on Mother Teresa starring Noomi Rapace, which had its premiere in Venice this summer. Then we catch up with acclaimed Iranian director Sharham Mokri, who travelled to neighbouring Tajikistan for his latest film, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, which screened in competition in London. With the help of interpreter Iante Roach, Shahram and Sam discussed the deep links between Iranian and Tajik cinema – including how jumping between the two countries can help filmmakers from both to avoid growing censorship at home.  Read our interview with Teona on her previous film 21 Days Until the End of the World here. Read Tajik filmmaker Anisa Sabiri on the influence of Iranian cinema in Tajikistan here.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Welcome back! It’s season five of the Klassiki podcast. We’ve got ten more great episodes lined up for you, featuring some exciting interviews, historical deep dives, and a Halloween special later this month. In the meantime, get in touch with us at [email protected].  We’re kicking things off with some science fiction. Boris and Arkady Strugatsky were brothers who dominated postwar Soviet sci-fi with their philosophical, subversive, and hugely popular novels and short stories. The Strugatskys also had a second life on screen, collaborating with a wide array of directors on adaptations of their work – most famously Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. You can’t really understand eastern bloc sci-fi without the Strugatsky Brothers. But who were they, where did their remarkable visions come from, and why have their proven so appealing to so many filmmakers?  To answer these questions, host Sam Goff speaks with Marat Grinberg,​Professor of Russian and Humanities at Reed College, who’s written extensively on Soviet sci-fi and the Jewish experience under communism. They discuss the Strugatskys’ traumatic childhoods, the ways their work has been transformed by directors from the 60s to the Putin era, and how their Jewishness informed their work.  Subscribers can watch two Strugatsky adaptations on Klassiki now: Aleksandr Sokurov’s Days of Eclipse and Grigori Kromanov’s Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’ve reached the end season four! Thank you as always for listening along. We’ll be back in the autumn, so look out for that and make sure you’re subscribed in your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss out. In the meantime, we want to hear from you. Do you have questions, comments, complaints, or suggestions for the show? You can now email them to us at [email protected]. Get in touch ahead of the new season. We’re closing out season four with a look at a fascinating and misunderstood part of Ukraine: the Donbas. This resource-rich region in the east of the country was celebrated as the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, but since 2014 has become synonymous with destruction and war after more than a decade of Russian aggression and occupation. It’s a region that has been subject to much controversy, within Ukraine as well as internationally, but its vibrant and diverse history is too often overlooked. It’s this history that Victoria Donovan has set out to capture in her fantastic new book, Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East. Victoria draws on her extensive travel and research in Donbas to move past the clichés and give a human perspective on events. Host Sam Goff sat down with her to discuss the book, and to explore how film has been used and abused in creating an image of the region. We’ve put together a playlist of some of the films discussed in this episode for Klassiki subscribers, which you can find here. Buy Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East here. Read an interview with Freefilmers here and explore their recent work here. Explore documentary material from the Donbas in the Urban Media Archive here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for a profile of the great Estonian actor Jüri Järvet – a cult hero of Soviet and Baltic film who overcame family trauma as a young man before bursting onto the international scene in the 1970s. In the space of just a few years, Jarvet helped to modernise Estonian cinema, worked with Tarkovsky, and played King Lear to huge critical and popular acclaim. Despite this, his story is not well known in the West. Read the original piece here and watch Järvet’s classic turns in Madness and Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week, we’re launching the latest edition of Klassiki Picks, our series of watchlists curated by our friends in the world of cinema and eastern Europe. In this hot seat this time around is prolific British artist and filmmaker Ben Rivers, whose latest feature, the post-apocalyptic tale Mare’s Nest, premieres in competition at the Locarno Film Festival this week. With that in mind, Ben has picked a fascinating quartet of titles for Klassiki: four films that explore the end of the world, whether literal or metaphorical, featuring sci-fi weirdness, nuclear paranoia, and the threat of social collapse. Host Sam Goff sat down with Ben to discuss the appeal of this End Times cinema, the unique nature of eastern European sci-fi, children on film, and the enduring influence of Aleksandr Sokurov on his work.  Make sure to explore Ben’s Klassiki Picks, available to subscribers from 7 August.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Critic, researcher, and friend of the show Alisa Goruleva is back on the pod this week for the second edition of the Kino Club, our watch-a-long exploration of Klassiki’s ever-expanding catalogue. Host Sam Goff asked Alisa to pick another film from our library that she hadn’t seen before to discuss. This time around, she plumped for Andrzej Munk’s 1958 war satire Eroica, a cynical deconstruction of the myths of military heroism.  Alisa and Sam discuss Munk’s tragically short career, his place among the titans of post-war Polish film, and Eroica’s blend of black humour, despair, and disillusioned humanism. Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Make sure to check out Alisa’s writing over on the Klassiki Journal, and leave us a review to let us know which films you’d like us to tackle next in the Kino Club.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal. Today is the seventieth birthday of one of the true greats: Béla Tarr, Hungary’s maestro of slow cinema melancholy. So, to celebrate, host Sam Goff is reading from our companion to the life and times of this icon of eastern European film – from his early days as a schoolboy anarchist to his position as a grandee of world cinema. Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of Hungarian titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

2025 is the centenary year of one of Soviet cinema’s true greats: Marlen Khutsiev, whose films from the fifties and sixties captured the excitement of the post-war years. If there was such a thing as the Soviet New Wave, then Khutsiev was its beating heart. In films like I Am Twenty and July Rain, he borrowed from the neorealists in Italy and iconoclasts in France to depict a society on the brink of transformation.  To celebrate Khutsiev in his 100th year, host Sam Goff is joined by Boris Nelepo, programmer, critic, and Co-Head of Programming at the DocLisboa Film Festival, who befriended the filmmaker at the end of his life.  Watch Khutsiev’s classic films I Am Twenty and Spring on Zarechnaya Street on Klassiki now and read Boris’s tribute to his friend here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal. Today, host Sam Goff reads an essay about the work of one of Baltic cinema’s great innovators, Rolands Kalniņš, aka the Latvian Godard, whose playfully political films staged a colourful protest against Soviet occupation. This piece was written by friend of the show Joshua Polanski, a critic specialising in Baltic film who listeners may remember from our episode in season three about Jonas Mekas. Read the original piece here and read more from Joshua on Baltic film on his site. And make sure to explore Klassiki’s collection of titles from the Baltic states. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.  

This week we’re trying something new on the pod: the first edition of the Klassiki Kino Club. We wanted to find a way of championing our ever-growing library of films with our listeners. So we asked a friend of the show to pick a title available on Klassiki that they had never seen before to watch for the first time – and then to jump on a call to offer their reactions and reflections.  Joining us today is Alisa Goruleva, a Russian film critic and researcher based in Berlin who’s recently been writing some wonderful pieces for the Klassiki Journal. Her choice of film was Confidence (1980) by Hungary’s István Szabó. Alisa and host Sam Goff get into the film’s take on gendered power dynamics and its depiction of a world at war. Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Make sure to check out Alisa’s writing over on the Klassiki Journal, and leave us a review to let us know which films you’d like us to tackle next in the Kino Club.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The cinema of communist Romania rarely gets a look in compared with the 21st-century New Wave of Cristi Puiu, Radu Jude, and co. At Klassiki we’ve just launched a new collection of classic Romanian titles from the 1960s and '70s that tries to redress the balance. From wartime epics to New Wave romance and subversive satire, these films reveal a different side of Romanian film and set the scene for contemporary favourites.  This week, host Sam Goff sits down with critic and programmer Flavia Dima to discuss this history and talk in depth about the four titles in our new collection. Watch these Romanian classics on Klassiki now and read Flavia’s writing on the period here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Welcome back! We’ve made it to season four of the Klassiki Podcast. We’re kicking off with a return guest: one of our very favourite filmmakers, Radu Jude. After the success of last year’s gig-economy satire Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Radu is back in 2025 with not one but two new films: Kontinental ‘25, an homage to Roberto Rossellini’s classic morality tale Europa ‘51, and what promises to be an unmissable take on the Dracula legend – watch out for that one arriving soon. Host Sam Goff sat down with Radu to discuss Transylvania, fascism, vampires, and TikTok. Listen to our previous episode with Radu here – and check out a selection of his brilliant shorts on Klassiki now. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’ve reached the end of the third season of the show! Thank you to everyone who’s listened along so far. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a five-star review or a comment on your podcast app of choice. We’ll be back soon with more great shows – subscribe now so you don’t miss a thing. At the end of April, we’ll be running our third annual partnership with the goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film. To preview this exciting season, host Sam Goff sits down with Heleen Gerritsen, who is stepping down in 2025 as director of the festival after eight years at the helm.  Heleen has been at the forefront of curating Eastern European film during a turbulent and tragic period for the region. She shares her perspectives on how to engage with the new realities facing filmmakers and film lovers, highlights goEast’s retrospective of the Indigenous filmmaker Anastasia Lapsui, and selects some of her favourite discoveries from her time at the festival. Klassiki’s partnership with goEast runs from 24 April - 22 May. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the Slovak maestro of the macabre, Juraj Herz, written and read by Sam Goff. Best known for his controversial and politically charged 1969 horror film The Cremator, Herz remains the great outsider of the Czech New Wave – a Holocaust survivor who mined his personal trauma to produce some of the most striking gothic visions to be found anywhere in communist-era cinema. Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of classic Czech and Slovak titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week, Klassiki is launching a new collection of Russian documentaries, exploring life in the country as repressions continue to intensify and the war on Ukraine stretches into its fourth year. On the podcast this week, we’re highlighting another recent documentary that deserves wider attention – Masha Chernaya’s The Shards, which won best film at the DocLisboa festival last year. Shot in a raw, DIY style during the first months of the war, the film sees Chernaya and her cohort reflecting on a homeland that has changed beneath their feet. We see glimpses of underground culture, from raves to fight clubs, as well as an intimate exposure to personal tragedy as the filmmaker’s mother battles against cancer. Host Sam Goff sits down with Chernaya to explore about how she went about documenting the world around her and how she balanced the personal and political struggles she encountered on the way. Our new season of Russian documentaries launches on Klassiki this Thursday 3 April. Find out more here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

“The godfather of American avant-garde cinema“, Jonas Mekas left his native Lithuania in 1944, and a few years later moved to New York. His friendships and collaborations with the likes of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and Yoko Ono helped to consolidate the downtown art scene, and his impressionistic “diary films”, compiled from footage of his life that he obsessively shot on his handheld Bolex camera, have proved hugely influential on experimental film ever since.  Mekas never lost sight of his native Lithuania, returning to themes of dislocation and home throughout his career. His work speaks to the cinema traditions of the Baltic region more broadly. His attachment to Lithuanian national culture produced controversy at the end of his life when questions were raised about his work under Nazi occupation in the 1940s.  To untangle the question of Mekas, Lithuania, and the avant-garde, host Sam Goff speaks with Josh Polanski, a critic who specialises in cinema from the Baltic states. You can find Josh’s writing on Baltic film here, and explore our collection of films from the region here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

In 2020, Belarus was rocked by mass protests following fraudulent presidential elections that returned autocratic leader Aleksandr Lukashenko to power. The new feature film from Belarusian-Polish director Mara Tamkovich, Under the Grey Sky, is based on the true story of a journalist, Kateryna Andreevna, who was arrested and charged with treason for broadcasting police brutality against protestors. Under the Grey Sky is screening across the UK now as part of this year’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival. This week on the show, host Sam Goff sits down with Mara to discuss the real life events behind her film, and to try and shed light on the situation in Belarus – a country in the grip of a brutal regime, and one that remains party to the war in Ukraine, but which is too often absent from conversations about the region.  You can find information about screenings of Under the Grey Sky at this year’s Kinoteka Film Festival, both in London and on tour throughout the UK, on the festival site. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

2025 is the centenary year of Wojciech Jerzy Has – one of Poland’s greatest and most misunderstood filmmakers. A full retrospective of Has’s films is currently underway across the UK: from his surrealist masterpieces The Saragossa Manuscript and The Hourglass Sanatorium, to his never-before-screened shorts. To set the scene for this retrospective, host Sam Goff speaks with its curator, Polish film expert Michael Brooke, about Has’s peculiar place in Polish film history, his unique approach to literary adaptations, and the dreamworlds he conjured onscreen. You can find information about all the Has screenings at this year’s Kinoteka Film Festival, both in London and on tour throughout the UK, on the festival site. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Artist, guru, witch, muse. The cinematic polymath Ester Krumbachová was an essential figure behind many of the classics of the Czech New Wave. But Krumbachová herself remains an elusive figure, marginalised in histories of female filmmaking. In recent years, this has begun to change. Krumbachová’s sole directorial effort, the romantic parody Murdering the Devil, has been restored and screened worldwide. It’s coming to the UK this month, with three screenings as part of this year’s Borderlines Film Festival, in Hereford, Ludlow, and Malvern, and Klassiki subscribers can watch the restoration on the site now. Host Sam Goff sat down with writer and curator Rachel Pronger to discuss Krumbachová’s role in the Czech New Wave, her fall from grace, and what her work can teach us about feminist filmmaking today. Get your tickets for the Borderlines Film Festival screenings of Murdering the Devil. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

In this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the Soviet-Ukrainian director Larisa Shepitko, written and read by host Sam Goff. One of the most significant female filmmakers to emerge from the Soviet system, Shepitko’s career was cut short at the age of just 41 when she was killed in a car crash while location scouting for her fifth feature. Her surviving work reflects her experiences as a child of war and dislocation and remains vital to our understanding of the post-Soviet world. Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of classic Soviet titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are among the jewels in the crown of British cinema. One half of this national institution, Emeric Pressburger, was a Hungarian Jewish refugee – a background rarely commented on in discussions of the duo’s achievements. He brought Central European sensibilities to the British public – but how do we locate the Hungarian element in the Archers?  This week, host Sam Goff welcomes back film historian and curator Ian Christie to the pod. Ian knew Pressburger at the end of his life and, along with the likes of Martin Scorsese, helped to kickstart the Powell and Pressburger revival in the late 1970s – so he was perfectly placed to discuss the life and times of this fascinating figure. Subscribers can explore our own collection of classic Hungarian titles here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.