Kanopy (Firm)

Moscow 1955. Stalin has been dead two years, but not even Khrushchev's thaw can prevent Komsomol shock troops from hounding hipsters (stilyagi), fans of American jazz, culture and fashion. The student Mels, a Komsomol member, meets Polya, a hipster, while conducting a raid on a hipster hangout. Mels falls in love with Polya while his Communist comrade harbors romantic feelings for him. Mels ingratiates himself into Polya's group of hipsters who meet...

A cinematographic poem in which Vertov lays the foundation of his Kino-Eye principles, the film shows the incredible force of his theories, but also the beauty and energy of a society fresh from revolution, ready to face the challenges of a difficult future. Kino-Eye feature musical accompaniments by Alloy Orchestra and Robert Israel respectively.

Hailed by the New York Times as "An unexpected masterpiece," A slave of love is a witty and haunting film about moviemaking from the acclaimed Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the sun). Within the sun-drenched beauty of the Crimean summer, a Russian movie crew grapples with film shortages, Tsarist secret police scrutiny, and their own dysfunctional dynamic to churn out one more silent melodrama before the revolution in Moscow consumes the...

Long suppressed by missionaries and then by Soviet anti-religious campaigns, Siberian shamanism has experienced an unprecedented revival following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the number of shamans continues to rise. But who are these new shamans? Are they tricksters, magicians, businessmen, or cultural activists?

When legendary Russian auteur Aleksei German died in 2013, he left behind this extraordinary final film, a phantasmagoric adaptation of the revered sci-fi novel by the Strugatsky Brothers (authors of the source novel for Tarkovsky's Stalker). Hard to be a God began percolating in German's consciousness in the mid-1960s, and would actively consume him for the last 15 years of his life. He brought the film close enough to completion for his wife and...

A truck driver takes a wrong turn and finds himself lost in a bleak Russian underworld, struggling to survive amidst increasingly violent reminders of the country's dark history. The first fiction film by acclaimed documentarian Sergei Loznitsa, My Joy is a mischievous, ultra-nihilistic parable of post-Communist Russia, shot by master cinematographer Oleg Muto (The death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days).

The documentary follows Yuri Vella, writer and social activist of the Forest Nenets living in West-Siberia. To give his grandchildren proper education in their natural environment and teach them reindeer herding skills, he establishes an elementary school in his winter camp.

Winter 2015, Belarus. The presidential election is brewing. The omnipotent Lukashenko is running for a 5th. mandate at the head of this martyred country: devastated by World War II and then by Chernobyl. Kostia has just turned 18. He lives in the countryside, surrounded by his relatives: his grandmother who follows the presidential campaign on TV, the neighbor, a political opponent who restores the statues of the church, a photographer friend who...

The largest-scale and biggest-budget production of the 1920s. Exhausted by the post-revolutionary life, engineer Los builds a spaceship to travel to Mars. A tragic accident forces him to urgently make use of his invention. On Mars he falls in love with Queen Aelita, while the Red Army man who came with him raises a proletarian uprising. The revolution destroys the Martian civilization.

A group of young immigrants in Israel is trying to win the International Breakdance Championship. The intense competition is primary focus of their lives, but as we watch them practice and rehearse we enter a world of crisis and alienation. Mixer, 27, is supporting his young family and trying to help his younger brother and sister, who still live with their alcoholic mom. Potter, 21, is in the army now; he still dreams of dancing, but has no one to...