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The Ukrainian historical period show Love in Chains has all the costumes, drama, romance, and intrigue of similar shows, just without the wide American viewing audience. Period romance shows have always been massively popular, even before streaming glutted the market and put them just a click away. The fashion, voyeuristic look into high society, the steamy romances, and the surprising parallels to the modern world keep viewers coming back for more, no matter where and when shows like Bridgerton are set.

Love in Chains premiered in 2019 and lasted for three seasons, detailing the life of Katerina Verbitskaya (Katerina Kovalchuk) in what is now northern Ukraine in the 1800s. Raised by her godmother, Anna Chervinskaya (Yuliya Aug), to be a noble, Katerina's life is all in service to her husband, Peter Chervinsky (Stanislav Boklan), who ostensibly owns her. When her godmother passes away, Katerina's life gets flipped around, and she becomes a slave,...

On the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel, we will be posting one full movie every other day throughout the week, giving viewers the chance to watch them entirely free of charge. The Free Movie of the Day we have for you today is the comedy 7 Wishes, a Russian production that’s also known as The Marathon of Desires. You can watch it over on the YouTube channel linked above, or you can just watch it in the embed at the top of this article.

Directed by Darya Charusha, who wrote the screenplay with Maksim Budarin, Aleksandr Gudkov, Andrew Ilitchev, Tina Kaval, Ekaterina Kononenko, Ilya Naishuller, Darya Pavlotos, and Svetlana Ustinova, 7 Wishes has the following synopsis: Hoping to change her life, Marina, a small town girl, embarks on a journey to a life coaching event. But an unexpected delay at a St. Petersburg airport sends her on a 24 hour comedic spree, which...

“I don’t want to be a symbol,” Kirill Serebrennikov told the New York Times earlier this year. Good luck with that. When Leto was selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 2018 the famed dissident director of stage and screen was still under house arrest in Moscow. He was absent again last year for Petrov’s Flu, owing to ongoing legal issues (dubiously charged with embezzling funds from his own theatre company); then in January, all of a sudden, he was free. Granted leave to direct a play in Hamburg, the Russian artist has stayed there since.

After all those galas in absentia, Serebrennikov is finally here, traveling to Cannes this week with Tchaikovsky’s Wife, a film that throws a sidelong glance at the challenges Russian artists have always had to accept. It was pointedly chosen as the first competition film to screen this year, premiering one day after...

Compartment Number 6 Review — Compartment Number 6 (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Juho Kuosmanen and starring Yuriy Borisov, Seidi Haarla, Yuliya Aug, Dinara Drukarova, Polina Aug, Galina Petrova, Konstantin Murzenko and Lidia Kostina. Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen has crafted an entertaining and very compelling human drama with his new film, Compartment Number [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Compartment Number 6 (2021): A Terrifically Acted Movie About the Need for Human Connection...

Leto! Gunpowder & Sky has debuted an official Us trailer for the indie Russian film Leto, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year to some rave reviews. This also went on to play at lots of other festivals throughout last year, from Karlovy Vary to Vienna and more. Leto, directed by filmmaker & theater director Kirill Serebrennikov who was under house arrest for the last year, is based on the true story of Viktor Tsoy and his band called Kino. The title translates to Summer, and the film is shot in black & white, evoking an old school feeling taking us back to the 70s & 80s. It's an awesome, groovy rock film with some incredible musical sequences that you just have to see on the big screen. Teo Yoo stars as Viktor Tsoy, and the main cast features Irina Starshenbaum, Roman Bilyk, Anton Adasinsky, Yuliya Aug, & Filipp Avdeev. This was one...

The Student, which is translated on screen as “The Disciple” (an interpretation far more fitting, although the Russian word used is also close to “Martyr”) is, if nothing else, an intensely frustrating film. Directed with the subtlety of a shotgun by Kirill Serebrennikov and shot with a formally energetic approach full of vim and vigor by Vladislav Opelyants, it is a film which actually has the force and rigor to take on the thorny subject of religious fundamentalism. But even if it is visually up to the task, The Student is hobbled by its script and hog tied by its characters.

A screed against religion, or to be more precise, the fundamental devotion to a religious text, in this case The Bible, The Student is a film with the potential for great satire and importance, grounded in the decision to show a conviction towards the text not often seen on...

Russian Director Aleksei Fedorchenko's third feature - Silent Souls - is, as the name suggests, a quiet homage to the dead.

Aist (Igor Sergeev) is a 40 year-old photographer who collects “snatches” of traditional songs/rhymes, influenced by his deceased poet father. When his boss and friend, Miron (Yuriy Tusurilo), tells him his wife, Tanya (Yuliya Aug), has died the night before, he sets out on a road trip to help him put her soul to rest.

Silent Souls is an impressive second feature from writer, Denis Osokin, playing on traditional story-telling techniques to create a visual poem. His narrative lies intriguingly in past tense, occasionally using elements of the mystery genre to keep us guessing where the film will go. “It's one of those towns that no-one remembers these days,” says our narrator Aist, describing his home town, Neya, and leaving us to ponder what has changed. “I don't...

Silent Souls (15)

(Aleksei Fedorchenko, 2010, Rus) Igor Sergeev, Yuriy Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug. 78 mins

Even by Russian standards, this lyrical road movie is a strange world of its own. It's a journey back in time, as much as across a remote landscape, with a friend helping his boss to give his deceased wife her last rites, according to their ancient tribal ways. Along the drive, we're steeped in strange folklore involving vodka, rivers, small birds and ornamental pubic hair. Is it for real? Or an elaborate joke told with a very straight face? Does it matter?

The Five Year Engagement (15)

(Nicholas Stoller, 2012, Us) Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Chris Pratt. 124 mins

The obstacle to true love is built into the title of this romcom, but it's at least smartly handled, as high-flyer Blunt keeps her fiance in perpetual limbo.

Where Do We Go Now? (12A)

(Nadine Labaki, 2011, Fra/Leb/Egy/Ita) Claude Baz Moussawbaa,...

★★★★☆ Aleksei Fedorchenko beguiles and rewards with his lyrical meditation on the passage of time, Silent Souls (Ovsyanki, 2010). Lonesome middle-aged man Aist (Igor Sergeev) is called up by his boss Miron (Yuriy Tsurilo), whose wife Tanya (Yuliya Aug) has just died, asking him to help give her a tranquil send-off becoming of their adherence to Meryan, an ancient, mystical civilisation.

Read more »...

Funeral practices among the Meryan ethnic group in Russia leave Peter Bradshaw in quasi-necrophile rapture

If you can imagine the world of Milan Kundera moved many miles to the east and tinged with melancholy, you may have some idea of Silent Souls, by the 45-year-old Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko. It combines sadness with a really gamey sexiness and quasi-necrophile rapture: a drama set in west central Russia, among the ethnic Meryan community who trace their origins to Finland. There is a shimmer of unreality; perhaps it is magic unrealism. When Tanya (Yuliya Aug), the wife of factory boss Miron (Yuri Tsurilo) dies, he asks best friend Aist (Igor Sergeyev) to help him with the traditional observances. These include "smoke": the bereaved one speaks of the departed in the most sexual way, in order to convert grief into tenderness. Moreover, the body is adorned as it was for the wedding night,...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The passage of time is a crazy thing – it has the ability to swallow up not only whole lives, but entire civilisations and cultures. In Silent Souls, by our sheer bemusement at much of what is going on, director Aleksei Fedorchenko illustrates this with a beautifully calm, trained eye.

When lonely middle-aged man Aist (Igor Sergeev) receives a call from his boss, Miron (Yuriy Tsurilo), that his wife Tanya (Yuliya Aug) has died, the pair embark on a quest to give her a tranquil final resting place. Living in Russia’s town of Neya, the two identify themselves as belonging to the ancient Meryan peoples, and their adherence to the traditions therein informs the entirety of their road trip.

Bringing a pair of birds along for the trip, they sit in their cage and serve as a metaphor, for the two men are similarly confined by...

Bullet Collector Trailer, Sobiratel Pul Trailer, Sobiratel Pul Poster. Alexander Vartanov‘s Bullet Collector/Sobiratel Pul (2011) movie trailer, movie poster stars Yuliya Aug, Ivan Basov, Pyotr Fyodorov, Vitaliy Gerasimov, and Alisa Khazanova. Bullet Collector‘s plot synopsis: “He is fourteen and he does not like his life at all. Trying to escape from a dull everyday life where he feels weak and coward, he breaks free in a fantasy world in which he acts noble, generous and fearless. When he flees home and ends up in a very strict reform school, dreams and reality become one.”

The Bullet Collector/Sobiratel Pul movie poster:

Bullet Collector/Sobiratel Pul poster

On the movie trailer:

Shot in stunning high contrast black and white, Alexander Vartanov’s first feature looks to a be a part of Eastern European trend showcasing brutalized children.

Watch the Bullet Collector/Sobiratel Pul movie trailer and leave your thoughts...

“If something is doomed to disappear, then so be it,” decides Igor Sergeev, the narrator of Aleksei Fedorchenko’s tender, mournful third feature, Silent Souls. But that’s easier said (or thought—no one spends much time speaking in this film) than done, most of all when you’re burying a loved one. And Yuliya Aug, who appears alive in Silent Souls only in flashbacks, was very much loved—by Sergeev, and by her husband Yuriy Tsurilo, Sergeev’s friend and coworker. They’re Volga Finns, members of a Russian ethnic minority, though their people, the Merjan, assimilated centuries ago ...

Russian filmmaker Aleksei Fedorchenko’s Silent Souls plays at the New York Film Festival following its three awards at the Venice Film Festival, including the Ozella prize for Best Photography. This is one of the better films at the fest, and with its positive reception at Venice, Tiff and now Nyff, this will hopefully find some kind of a theatrical release, albeit it being a small art-house one. The story is based on a novel by the writer/director’s friend Aist Sergeyev. This is the fourth project they have collaborated on, and Fedorchenko claims they have five more to go. The story is a kind of historical fiction, with a little "extra" fiction added since the records of the people and events described are long lost. The story follows two men who live in a small village and are descended of an ancient race called Merjans that seemingly comes...

Ovsyanki or Silent Souls, another title In Competition for Golden Lion statue at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

This time, we’re here to present you a movie that comes from a Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko that is already being described as “melancholy drama relates the journey of a man and his companion, who travel to a river with the remains of his companion’s late wife.”

Here’s the Silent Souls synopsis: “After a man’s young wife dies suddenly (the cause is never disclosed) he enlists the help of a colleague in disposing of the body in accordance with the local custom.

The characters here are Meryar, descendants of a 400-year-old Finnish tribe once native to that part of western Russia, but now all but forgotten. They have different and non-traditional names for places and people, but most strikingly different are their rituals to do with marriage...

#24. Silent Souls Director: Aleksei FedorchenkoCast: Igor Sergeyev, Yuriy Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug, Viktor Sukhorukov ;Distributor: Rights Available. Buzz: Silent Souls is leaving Venice with plenty of positive buzz and will then make its way to Nyff. This is Aleksei Fedorchenko's third film and I know nothing about the filmmaker or the film -- but this sounds like a good festival ticket gamble. The Gist: When Miron's beloved wife Tanya passes away, he asks his best friend Aist to help him say goodbye according to the rituals of the Merya culture, an ancient Finno-Ugric tribe from Lake Nero. The two men set out on a road trip thousands of miles across the boundless lands. Tiff Schedule: Thursday September 16 6:00:00 Pm Varsity 8 Friday September 17 4:45:00 Pm Scotiabank Theatre 4 Saturday September 18 9:30:00 Am AMC 6  ...

Yuliya Aug and Yuriy Tsurilo attending the 67th Annual Venice Film Festival. Photo copyright Insidefoto / PR Photos. Yuliya Aug and Yuriy Tsurilo attending the 67th Annual Venice Film Festival. Photo copyright Insidefoto / PR Photos. Yuliya Aug and Yuriy Tsurilo attending the 67th Annual Venice Film Festival. Photo copyright Insidefoto / PR Photos. Yuliya Aug and Yuriy Tsurilo attending the 67th Annual Venice Film Festival. Photo copyright Insidefoto / PR Photos. Yuliya Aug and Yuriy Tsurilo attending the 67th Annual Venice Film Festival. Photo copyright Insidefoto / PR Photos. 09/04/2010 - Yuliya Aug and Yuriy Tsurilo - 67th Annual Venice Film Festival - "Silent Souls" ("Ovsyanki") Photocall - Palazzo del Casino - Venice, Italy...

Natalie Portman is superb as a troubled ballet dancer, Robert Rodriguez gets trashy, and a Jerusalem-set drama provides this year's turkey at the Venice film festival

The Venice film festival began with a feverish combination of burning heat and rainy thunderstorms that swept the Lido, and its opening film was appropriately hotwired with psychodrama, melodrama and ionospherically over-the-top theatrics. Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is a heavily sexualised psycho-thriller about an over-wrought ballerina in New York about to take the lead role in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake; she finds that preparing for the dark "Black Swan" role, and fending off the ambitions of a rival dancer, is unlocking something disturbing within her own troubled soul.

Thoroughly outrageous at all times, Aronofsky's film is certainly watchable, though his inability to see a stop without pulling it out perhaps lessens the impact after a while. There are some scary moments and a queasy,...

Are you guys ready for the oldest film festival in the world? Yeah, sure you are! Who’s crazy enough to miss all that glamour, great movies, and well-known faces? Guess nobody!

This year’s Venice Film Festival runs from September 1- 11th and some great titles will compete for Leone d’Oro, or if you prefer Golden Lion, indeed!

Just in case you don’t trust us, check out a list of all the films playing in competition:

In Competition

Black Swan, Opening Night Film (dir. Darren Aronofsky – U.S.) Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

La Pecora Nera, (dir. Ascanio Celestini – Italy) Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi, Maya Sansa

Somewhere, (dir. Sofia Coppola – U.S.) Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Laura Chiatti, Simona Ventura

Happy Few, (dir. Antony Cordier – France) Marina Fois, Elodie Bouchez, Roschdy Zem, Nicolas Duvauchelle

The Solitude of Prime Numbers,...

Earlier this week, the fifty films showing at the Toronto International Film Festival were announced. Today, we have a list of the films showing in-competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Highlights of the Festival include Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Richard J. Lewis’ Barney’s Version, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, and Tom Tykwer’s Drei. What’s also cool about this list is that we see the runtimes of each of the films. However, it’s not unusual for a film to undergo changes between a festival and its general release.

Hit the jump for a list of all the films playing in-competition and click here for the films playing out-of-competition. This year’s Venice Film Festival runs from September 1 – 11th.

Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan

USA, 103′

Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Ascanio Celestini – La Pecora Nera

Italia, 93′

Ascanio Celestini,...

The line-up for the 67th Venice Film Festival has finally been announced and we've handily posted the runners and riders below...

The Italian cinematic shindig, which runs from September 1-11 and features the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Arriaga, Arnaud Desplechin, Danny Elfman, Luca Guadagnino and Gabriele Salvatores on the competition jury, has pulled out all the stops this year with some very exciting flicks.

Top on our list of must-see movies includes Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, Vincent Gallo's Promises Written In Water and Anh Hung Tran's Murasaki adaptation Norwegian Wood.

The films to be shown at the 67th Venice Film Festival are...

Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel.

La Pecora Nera, directed by Ascanio Celestini and starring Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi and Maya Sansa

Somewhere, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Stephen Dorff,...