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Here's another unwanted sequel to a movie no one saw that doesn't look very good... An official trailer has debuted for Major Grom: The Game, a Russian comic book movie from director Oleg Trofim. This is a sequel to the 2021 comic book movie Major Grom: Plague Doctor, a big budget production in Russia about a famous superhero. In this sequel, a year has passed since the defeat of the Plague Doctor, and Igor Grom has become a hero for the whole city. But now he is waiting for a fight with a new supervillain. His perfect police life in St. Petersburg is disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious villain calling himself Ghost (or "The Phantom"). He asks him to play a dangerous game, the stakes being the lives of ordinary people. Well, that doesn't sound very fun! This stars Tikhon Zhiznevskiy as Grom, plus Alexander Seteykin, Lyubov Aksyonova, Aleksey Maklakov,...

For 50 issues, lasting from 2012 to 2016, the Bubble Comics comic book series Major Grom, which was created by Artyom Gabrelyanov and Evgeny Fedotov, told readers stories about Igor Grom, a police major in the city of Saint Petersburg, who is – according to Wikipedia – “known for his uncompromising attitude to crime, his honesty and integrity, as well as his detective abilities and hand-to-hand combat skills.” Soon after the comic book finished its 50 issue run, a 29 minute Major Grom short was released into the world, and that paved the way for the production of a Major Grom feature film, Major Grom: Plague Doctor, which was released in 2021 and was “a loose adaptation of the first story arc of the comic series, telling the story of the confrontation between police major Igor Grom and the vigilante murderer known as Plague Doctor.” The sequel Major Grom: The Game is set to be released on May 23rd,...

UK film-makers are in the spotlight at the fifth edition of Vologda’s Voices festival (July 4-8), which will open with Ken Loach’s Cannes Competition film Jimmy’s Hall.

British actress Justine Waddell, who learnt Russian for her role in Alexander Zeldovich’s Target (Mishen), will join the competition’s international jury, including Moscow Film Festival programme director Kirill Razlogov, Russian actress Olga Sutulova, and Armenian-French actor-director-producer Serge Avedikian, with writer-director Svetlana Proskurina as jury chairperson.

The competition line-up of 10 first and second features are as follows:

Life Feels Good, dir: Maciej Pieprzyca, PolandStill Life, dir: Uberto Pasolini, UKClass Enemy, dir: Rok Bicek, SloveniaBlind, dir: Eskil Vogt, NorwayStereo, dir: Maximilian Erlenwein, GermanyThe Art Of Happiness, dir: Alessandro Rak, ItalyWolf, dir: Jim Taihuttu, The NetherlandsTo See The Sea, dir: Jirí Mádl, Czech RepublicWhen Animals Dream, dir: Jonas Alexander Arnby, DenmarkSkinless, dir: Vladimir Beck, Russia.

Sidebars include the out-of-competition European section with such films as The Great Beauty...

Russian movie star Tatiana Samoilova dead at 80; known as ‘the Russian Audrey Hepburn,’ Samoilova was best remembered for Cannes winner ‘The Cranes Are Flying’ (photo: Tatiana Samoilova in ‘The Cranes Are Flying’) Russian film star Tatiana Samoilova, best remembered for playing the female lead in Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 romantic drama The Cranes Are Flying, died of heart complications at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital late night on May 4, 2014 — the day the Leningrad-born (now St. Petersburg) actress turned 80. Samoilova, who had been suffering from coronary heart disease and hypertension, had been hospitalized the previous day. The daughter of iconic stage and film actor Yevgeny Samoilov, among whose credits was the title role in a 1954 production of Hamlet and several leads in highly popular movies made during World War II, Tatiana Samoilova studied ballet at Moscow’s prestigious Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko music theater. Beginning in 1953, she took acting lessons for three years...

Release Date: Oct. 18, 2011

Price: DVD $24.98, Blu-ray $29.98

Studio: Entertainment One

Armin Mueller-Stahl is a German general in Attack on Leningrad.

Gabriel Byrne (TV’s In Treatment), Mira Sorvino (Mimic) and Armin Mueller-Stahl (Avalon) star in the movie Attack on Leningrad, an action-filled war drama based on the true story of World War II’s deadliest siege, which lasted three horrific years.

Written and directed by Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Buravsky, the film focuses on a young British journalist, Kate Davis (Sorvino), who is trapped within the devastated city of Leningrad during the infamous Nazi siege in the winter of 1941. While isolated within the famished city and separated from her lover, American journalist Philip Parker (Byrne), Kate befriends Nina Tsvetkova (Olga Sutulova, The Night is Bright), a member of the Leningrad militia, and two Russian children. Struggling to survive the brutality of the Nazi siege, together they fight for their lives amidst a landscape of death,...