The reach and influence of Vladimir Putin is breathtaking. In A Very Expensive Poison, writer Lucy Prebble details and explores the assassination of Russian Defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 and surmises that Mr Putin most probably authorised the hit. If it weren’t based on a real incident, A Very Expensive Poison may simply…
Martin Cruz Smith’s Russian detective Arkady Renko has been kicking around since 1981’s Gorky Park. Even in that book he was already a senior investigator. If Renko aged at the same rate as his reality that would make him pretty old by now. Luckily for readers, Renko follows the rules of most fictional detectives in…
What is fact and what is fiction? You are left asking that question after an exhilarating 50 minutes at Chapel Off Chapel, with the wonderfully written and performed gay political thriller Dirt. The intrigue keeps ratcheting up. Just when you think you have a fix on what is going on, the rug is pulled from under you. The…
Raja (Mariya Belkin) and Victor Frankel (Vladimir Friedman), a couple in their 60s, were the unsung heroes of Russian cinema. For several decades they had dubbed Hollywood epics into Russian for cinema audiences. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the couple left Russia and migrated to Israel. But like thousands of…
Hero or villain? Murderer? Campaigner for a democratic Russia? These are just some of the triggers in Citizen K, a fascinating documentary about Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He was once Russia’s richest man (head of the oil giant Yukos) but now lives in exile In London. As you can imagine, Russian president Vladimir Putin features prominently. This…
– Russian Resurrection Film Festival – Only in cinemas in November 2019 We have 5 double in-season passes. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* From big-budget action blockbusters, to razor sharp female-led comedy and edge-of-your seat thrillers, the Russian Resurrection Film Festival is proud to be returning down-under in 2019, bringing with it a smorgasbord of…
then Loveless is a slow moving, atmospheric Russian drama that features harsh characters. It won of the Jury Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar. Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) have a deep disdain for one another; and for their 12 year-old son, Alyosha…
