The Klassiki Podcast

Locarno 2026 festival report: Florin Șerban, Isabelle Stever, Natalka Vorozhbyt

That’s a wrap on season seven of the podcast. As always, thank you for listening along. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss us when we return for season eight i

Films of the forest, from Tarkovsky to Kurosawa

The forest is one of the prevailing symbols of Russia and its former imperial holdings: from the Baltic to the taiga to the Pacific. But how has the forest informed Russi

Mark Cousins tells the story of documentary film

Among his many achievements, the Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins is perhaps best known for his sprawling documentaries charting the history of cinema: The Story of Film: An

The most important art: Ian Christie’s journey through late Soviet cinema

Long time listeners of the show will be familiar with the film historian Ian Christie, who’s joined us to discuss topics ranging from Aleksandr Sokurov to Powell and Pres

Otar Iosseliani’s fables of modern life

Renowned in his native Georgia as one of the nation’s greatest filmmakers, Otar Iosseliani spent the majority of his career in his adoptive home of France after emigratin

BONUS: Golden Apricot festival report

We have a bonus episode for you this week. Host Sam is in Yerevan, Armenia, attending the Golden Apricot International Film Festival – always a highlight of the year for

Unravelling the twisted crime films of Corneliu Porumboiu

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu. The most elusive of th

The Klassiki Kino Club: Tough Kids

We’re a few weeks into season seven, so it’s about time to open up the Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of the Klassiki catalogue. For this edition, I spoke with on

Beyond Mr Nobody: documentary under Putin

Russian documentary has been in the limelight following the Oscar win for Mr Nobody Against Putin earlier this year. The film consists of footage covertly shot by videogr

Boris Barnet: poet of the outskirts

Last week saw the 124th anniversary of Boris Barnet, one of the most influential filmmakers of the Soviet Union. In Europe, Barnet’s lyrical and humanistic cinema has lon

Valeska Grisebach returns with The Dreamed Adventure

Welcome back to season seven of the Klassiki Podcast! We’ve got ten more episodes coming up for you on the past and present of eastern European film, including some repor

The moral maze of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog

We’ve reached the end of season six. Thank you to all our subscribers and listeners old and new. We’ll be back in the summer – but in the meantime, don’t forget to subscr

Artavazd Pelechian: poetry at a distance

This week, cinema audiences in London are getting the rare chance to see a selection of films by the great Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian as part of the Open City

The Klassiki Kino Club: Getting to Know the Big Wide World

It’s been a while since we opened up the Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of Klassiki’s ever-expanding catalogue. We’re putting that right this week with a brand ne

Peter Strickland heads back to the East

Last week we launched the latest edition of Klassiki Picks, our series of watchlists curated by our friends in the world of cinema and eastern Europe. In this hot seat th

The Czechoslovak New Wave and beyond

When it comes to Central and Eastern European film, few movements loom larger than the Czechoslovak New Wave. Emerging in a period of political liberalisation and protest

To dance is to resist: queer life in wartime Ukraine

This week sees the return of one of the highlights of London’s cinematic calendar: BFI Flare, the largest LGBTQ+ film festival in Europe. One of the world premieres this

Building film culture in Uzbekistan

For many cinephiles, the Central Asian states remain something of a blind spot. A case in point is Uzbekistan, whose film industry stretches back to the silent era, but w

100 years of Andrzej Wajda

This week sees the one hundredth birthday of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema. Until 26 March, Klassiki subscribers can watch Wajda’s epochal double head

Roman Bondarchuk’s Ukrainian badlands

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for a profile of the Ukrainian filmmaker Roman Bondarchuk, whose deadpan, absurd