Inspired by the book of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich The unwomanly face of war, Russian director Kantemir Balagov made his second feature film, Beanpole. Set in Leningrad in 1945 after the siege is lifted and the war is over, two young women, Iya and Masha, search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins. Balagov manages to completely transport the audience to Leningrad in the autumn of 1945.

Shown at the Rotterdam Film Festival and now available in select theatres in the Netherlands, Sergei Loznitsa’s latest film paints a hopeless portrait of the war in Eastern Ukraine. It uses black humour to make sense of the harsh reality.

While his film 'Leto' (Summer) is shown at the Rotterdam Film Festival, theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov is in court, accused of fraud and embezzlement of state subsidies. He has been under house arrest since summer 2017 in an investigation that Moscow's intellectual elite considers as a revenge for his avant-garde theater. According to literary scholar Ksenia Robbe, Leto is more than a film about rock legend Viktor Tsoi who died young and became a cult hero. It's a playful work on the spirit of freedom that inspires hope.