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The Klassiki Companion: Béla Tarr klassiki.online
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The Watchlist: Radu Jude klassiki.online
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The Klassiki Companion: The Yugoslav Black Wave klassiki.online
Lists
Pick of the Week | Klassiki 147 films
Every Thursday, we release a new Pick of the Week, available to watch for up to 21 days. These films…
The Klassiki Catalogue 154 films
Explore our library — a curated tour through the best cinema past and present from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and…
The Yugoslav Black Wave | Klassiki 6 films
Home to one of the most distinctive of all Eastern Bloc filmmaking traditions, Yugoslavia produced a rich cinematic heritage –…
Klassiki Picks with Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė | Klassiki 5 films
Klassiki Picks is our series of curated watchlists handpicked for Klassiki subscribers by leading filmmakers, actors, and critics.
We’re delighted…
Shorts Showcase | Klassiki 11 films
Size doesn’t always matter. Klassiki’s brand new short film showcase presents hard-to-find miniature masterpieces: from Hungary to Uzbekistan, animation to…
goEast Film Festival 2024 | 25 April - 16 May 4 films
From 25 April - 16 May, Klassiki is partnering with goEast Film Festival. One of the world’s leading celebrations of…
Liked lists
Recent reviews
The film that announced the Czech New Wave to the world, Jiří Menzel’s beloved debut is a humanist comedy of errors and a minor-key ode to rebellion. Adapted from Bohumil Hrabal’s novel of the same name, Closely Observed Trains unfolds in a provincial railway station in the last days of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Teenage dispatcher Miloš (Václav Neckář) is less concerned with the ongoing war than with losing his virginity; meanwhile, the tension between ribald railwayman Hubička (Josef…
Adapted from the breakout novel by the great Milan Kundera, The Joke is one of Czech cinema’s most piercing political statements. During the Stalinist era, happy-go-lucky student Ludvík (Josef Somr) sends his girlfriend a postcard featuring an idle satirical remark, only to see his life fall apart as a result: expelled from university and the Communist Party, imprisoned and forced into military service. Two decades later, Ludvík returns to his hometown and hatches a desperate plan to get revenge on…
Ester Krumbachová was the hidden mastermind behind the Czech New Wave, contributing costumes, set design, and screenplays for some of the most celebrated films of the era. This new restoration of her sole directorial effort shines a fresh light on her sadly underutilised talents behind the camera. Murdering the Devil is a surreal, feminist fairy tale, in which an unnamed woman (Jiřina Bohdalová), desperate for companionship, begins wooing the gluttonous boor Theodore Devil (Vladimír Menšík) – only to find that…
Alexander Abaturov’s climate crisis documentary is a dreamlike but gripping account of a community battling forces beyond their control. In the Sakha Republic in northeastern Siberia, heatwaves have led to ever more devastating wildfires that ravage the vast subarctic forests of the taiga. In 2021, the village of Shologon was threatened by an encroaching blaze – but no help was forthcoming from the Russian state. Shologon lies within a “control zone”: the official term for areas considered too remote to…
Liked reviews
Jirí Menzel puts the Czech New Wave in the map of international celluloid with this provocative, luscious and sophisticated analysis of teen angst during wartime. A wonderful photography and a brilliant script, to say the least. Screw American Pies for a second or shameful deliveries that try to deal with male's idiocy regarding his penis. Ostre Sledované Vlaky puts a new standard in adolescent awkwardness in the most inappropriate chaotic setting, among drastic decisions and subtle and sexy hilarity. A unique project.
98/100
this was one of those weird and wonderful films that you just know you’re not going to get out of your head for weeks to come.
and despite its surface being so light and carefree, the depths of it go beyond anything i often see in cinema for such a film.
….
innocence is retained under an oblivious young boys acceptance of the war around him, and his harnessing of it to become his friend rather then his enemy.
it…
The Joke, directed by Jaromil Jireš, is one of the most scathing indictments of Communism to come out of the Czechoslovak New Wave film movement. It was also one of the Czechoslovak New Waves’ last films. The films centers around a man name Ludvik Jahn, a cynical scientific researcher who goes to visit his hometown to conduct an interview with a reporter there. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn of Jahn’s past life and how, as a student, he…
A year before the psychedelic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), Jaromil Jires constructed a tremendously masterful, politically charged, anti-Communist statement that works both as a collage of a multi-faceted, folkloric society, and as a fragmentary tale of unclichéd love and payback.
As it is notorious in the New Wave movement, The Joke questions the validity of Czechoslovak politics in a context of modernity, encompassing the army, art, intellectualism, and with negative nods to certain trends such as Cubism,…
Explore our library — a curated tour through the best cinema past and present from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
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