Sergei Parajanov - Ambavi Suramis tsikhitsa (Легенда о Сурамской крепости) AKA The Legend of Suram Fortress (1984)

Parajanov was born in 1924 (..) In 1964, Parajanov stunned critics and audiences with "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors", a baroque and free-wheeling adaptation of Romeo and Juliet-like Carpathian folklore involving two lovers separated by quarreling families and their tragic fates amid everyday village life and religious ritual. Visually stunning (the opening sequence involves the camera riding atop a falling tree), it was condemned for its brash formalism in a time when Kruschev had attacked abstract art, bringing an end to the post-Stalinist cultural "thaw" of the late-'50s and early '60s. The film was quickly removed from Soviet screens and precipitated Parajanov's extended battles with Soviet authorities. Kiev Frescos was cancelled mid-shoot because of its "bourgeois subjectivism and mysticism" (Ackerman) and Sayat-Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) (1969) was immediately banned and later released in a drastically re-edited form.

Sergei Parajanov - Sayat Nova aka The Color of Pomegranates (1968)

Quote:
The work of painter, musician, mystic and filmmaker Sergei Paradjanov (1924-1990) constantly defies categorisation. His films are notable for their lyrical inspiration and great aesthetic beauty, but riled the Soviet authorities to such an extent that Paradjanov faced constant harrassment throughout his life. Like his earlier film, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965), The Colour of Pomegranates was banned...
Ostensibly a biopic of rebellious 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, The Colour of Pomegranates follows the poet's path from his childhood wool-dying days to his role as a courtier and finally his life as a monk. But Armenian director Sergei Paradjanov warns us from the start that this is no ordinary biopic: "This is not a true biography," he has his narrator state during the opening credits.

Larisa Shepitko - Vosxozhdenie (Восхождение) AKA The Ascent (1976)

Quote:
A Soviet masterpiece

In the Belarus of 1942, two Soviet soldiers are captured by Nazi-friendly Belarusians. In captivity, the attitude of the two men toward their fate differs greatly. One of the soldiers manages to find an inner strength and spirituality, incomprehensible to the other man. Larisa Shepitko's last film is one of the most beautiful war films in cinema history.

Sergei Loznitsa - Blokada (Блокада) AKA Blockade (2006)

Icarus Films PR about the movie:
The longest siege during World War II was that of Leningrad, which lasted for 900 days, from September 1941 to January 1944, when Hitler attempted to starve the Soviet city of three million people into submission. Estimates of the number of residents who died from starvation, disease or cold range from 641,000 to 800,000.

Comprised solely of rarely-seen footage found in Soviet film archives by director Sergei Losnitsa, BLOCKADE vividly re-creates those momentous events, featuring a meticulously reconstructed, state-of-the-art soundtrack added to the original black-and-white silent footage. The result gives viewers the eerie impression of being not just an observer but virtually a participant in the events as they unfold on the streets of Leningrad.

Aleksei Balabanov - Pro urodov i lyudey AKA Of Freaks And Men (1998)

IMDB:
Dariya the maid getting a boy to touch her large breast is just one incident that occurs when Yohan and Victor infiltrate two families, forcing young Liza and blind Ekaterina to appear in porn, but they are not so innocent themselves.

Timur Bekmambetov - Nochnoi Dozor (Ночной дозор) AKA Night Watch (2004)

Information

Little Shop of Horrors, Russian Style

By Oleg Liakhovich The Moscow News

On the heels of the XXVI Moscow International Film Festival came an event even more pompous and widely publicized - the premiere of a movie meant to spark a revival of Russia's popular cinema while giving Hollywood a battle royale on its own terms


Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor in original Russian) depicts the on-going struggle between the magical forces of good and evil in present-day Moscow. The movie was eagerly awaited by fans and became an object of an intense advertising campaign in all media. Its US $3mln budget - an incredible sum for a local movie - and plentiful special effects, also a novelty for Russian cinema with its established traditions of inexpensive quality dramas and solid adaptations of literary classics, were to make Night Watch Russia's equivalent of an American summer blockbuster. The producers actually went as far as officially calling it "the first Russian blockbuster" long before it had the chance to appear on screen. Even Russia's own Oscar winner and self-styled national sage director Nikita Mikhalkov, while admitting that the film "wasn't his thing", said that it was "cool" and called it Russia's "answer to Quentin Tarantino". Serious praise indeed - after all, only a dirty mind would suspect Mikhalkov of still being sore at old Quentin for "stealing" his Palme d'Or in Cannes back in 1994.
Lightsaber, Anyone?

Yakov Protazanov - Aelita (Аэлита) AKA Revolt of the Robots (1924)

Directed by Soviet filmmaker Yakov Protazanov made on Mezhrabpom-Rus film studio and released in 1924. It was based on Alexei Tolstoy's novel of the same name.

AllMovie wrote:
The Marxist struggle reaches outer space in this fanciful Russian science fiction film from the silent period. Los (Nikolai Tsereteli) is an engineer who dreams of traveling to other worlds and imagines that a beautiful woman named Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva) lives on the planet Mars. Frustrated with the petty political conflicts that are a big part of life on Earth, Los builds a spaceship and travels to Mars, where he discovers that the lovely Aelita really does exist and is Queen of the Planet. However, the realities of political struggle do not escape him; it seems that the Martian proletariat are attempting to rise up and take power just as the Russian rank and file did, and Los once again finds himself standing between the ruling leadership and the workers attempting to take control of their own lives.
4/5

Aleksandr Sokurov - Russkiy kovcheg (Русский ковчег) AKA Russian Ark (2002)

Roger Ebert wrote:
Every review of "Russian Ark" begins by discussing its method. The movie consists of one unbroken shot lasting the entire length of the film, as a camera glides through the Hermitage, the repository of Russian art and history in St. Petersburg. The cinematographer Tillman Buttner, using a Steadicam and high-def digital technology, joined with some 2,000 actors in an tight-wire act in which every mark and cue had to be hit without fail; there were two broken takes before the third time was the charm.

The subject of the film, which is written, directed and (in a sense) hosted by Alexander Sokurov, is no less than three centuries of Russian history. The camera doesn't merely take us on a guided tour of the art on the walls and in the corridors, but witnesses many visitors who came to the Hermitage over the years. Apart from anything else, this is one of the best-sustained ideas I have ever seen on the screen. Sokurov reportedly rehearsed his all-important camera move again and again with the cinematographer, the actors and the invisible sound and lighting technicians, knowing that the Hermitage would be given to him for only one precious day.