The Klassiki Podcast

Listeners may remember our conversation earlier this year with Michael Brooke celebrating the centenary of Wojciech Has – one of Poland’s greatest and most misunderstood directors. We’re taking one last opportunity to honour Has’s hundredth anniversary year: right now until Christmas Day, subscribers can enjoy a restored version of his mind-bending masterpiece The Saragossa Manuscript. Adapted from a founding classic of Polish literature, the film presents a surreal odyssey across time and space that nests stories within stories to baffling and hypnotic effect.  To unpack the film, Sam invited old friend of the show, film writer and historian Ian Christie, to join him in deciphering the Manuscript: from the source novel to the film’s daring formal tricks, its place in sixties counterculture, its long critical re-evaluation, and its profound influence on everyone from Luis Buñuel to David Lynch.  Watch The Saragossa Manuscript on Klassiki until 25th December.  Listen to our episode on the life and times of Wojciech Has here. Read Daniel Bird’s essay on Has’s surreal literary adaptations here. Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for a profile of the great Romanian director Lucian Pintilie, whose provocative, modernist work bridges the gap between communist-era filmmaking and the New Wave that has defined Romanian cinema in the 21st century. Subject to censorship and exile, Pintilie returned to his homeland in the 1990s to cement his legacy and influence a new generation of directors. Read the original piece here and make sure to check out Pintilie’s classic satire Reconstruction as well as our collection of classic Romanian titles. Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.  

Central Asia remains a great blindspot for many Western cinephiles – so we were thrilled to hear about an upcoming season in New York, hosted by the Asia Society in partnership with Anthology Film Archives. Eastern Notions is a celebration of the great Uzbek director Ali Khamraev, one of the true masters of Central Asian cinema, with more than 20 features in a career stretching back to the 1960s. Running from 20-23 November, the season highlights five of Khamraev’s fiction films, with the great man making a rare appearance in the States to attend in person. To mark the occasion, host Sam Goff spoke with the season’s curator Inney Prakash about Khamraev’s diverse body of work, his relationship with more famous Soviet icons like Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov, and the question of curating Central Asian film.  Listeners in New York, don’t miss out: Eastern Notions runs from 20-23 November at Asia Society and Anthology Film Archives.  Read our 2021 interview with Ali Khamraev for further insight into his long and fruitful career.  Klassiki subscribers can watch Khamraev’s poetic and autobiographical film I Remember You on the site now. Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

14 years after her previous feature, Julia Loktev is back with a monumental new documentary project. My Undesirable Friends is her collective portrait of some of the last independent journalists working in Russia in the run-up to, and aftermath of, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Part One, titled Last Air in Moscow, was shot entirely on iPhone during Loktev’s trips to the Russian capital. Over more than five immersive hours, we follow journalists from the TV channel Rain and other oppositional outlets as they struggle to keep pace with Russia’s descent into the abyss, from labelling journalists as “foreign agents” to outright assault and arrest. Host Sam Goff sat down with Julia to find out how the film evolved over time, the relationship between her work in fiction and documentary, and where she’s at with Part Two of the project, entitled Exile, which follows our journalist protagonists after they are forced to flee Russia. Last Air in Moscow is currently screening in select locations across the US. Find your nearest screening here. Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week, we’re reopening the Klassiki Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of Klassiki’s ever-expanding catalogue. In the hot seat this time around is Ally Pitts, host of the long-running Russian and Soviet Movies Podcast and confirmed Eastern European film aficionado. Ally’s choice comes from Azerbaijan: Orkhan Aghazadeh’s 2024 documentary The Return of the Projectionist, a portrait of cinephilia and friendship across generations.  Ally and host Sam Goff get into Aghazadeh’s playful blend of observation and performance, the state of cinema in the post-Soviet space, and how to make a nostalgic film without being sentimental.   Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Subscribers will also find our exclusive video interview with Aghazadeh. Check out Ally’s podcast here. Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

As every film fan knows, October is horror season. And while eastern Europe these days is full of horror filmmakers who can mix it with the best of them, this wasn’t always the case: under communism, the genre often struggled to get past state censors. But the idea that there was no horror produced behind the Iron Curtain is a myth. There was in fact a rich tradition in the sixties and seventies, drawing on national folklore, literary sources, and the region’s traumatic recent history to chilling effect. On Klassiki, you can currently stream a Halloween double header of cult classic Soviet films. Viy, by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov, is famous among genre fans as the greatest of all Soviet horror titles, while Valeri Rubinchik’s The Savage Hunt of King Stakh is a criminally under-seen gothic gem from Belarus.  In the spirit of the season, this week Sam speaks with Miriam Balanescu, a film writer and critic with a special interest in all things ghoulish. They discussed the horror history of countries like Poland and Czechia, the political subtext of genre filmmaking under communism, and what ‘folk horror’ meant in the Soviet context.  Don’t miss our Halloween double header, now showing on Klassiki. Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The 69th edition of the London Film Festival has just rolled through the capital’s cinemas, bringing a host of filmmaking talents in its wake. Sam headed down to the festival press circuit to speak to two directors in town with their latest films. First we hear from North Macedonia’s Teona Strugar Mitevska, who has been a shining light of Balkan filmmaking for over 20 years. Her latest film is perhaps her most ambitious yet: Mother, a punkish take on Mother Teresa starring Noomi Rapace, which had its premiere in Venice this summer. Then we catch up with acclaimed Iranian director Sharham Mokri, who travelled to neighbouring Tajikistan for his latest film, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, which screened in competition in London. With the help of interpreter Iante Roach, Shahram and Sam discussed the deep links between Iranian and Tajik cinema – including how jumping between the two countries can help filmmakers from both to avoid growing censorship at home.  Read our interview with Teona on her previous film 21 Days Until the End of the World here. Read Tajik filmmaker Anisa Sabiri on the influence of Iranian cinema in Tajikistan here.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Welcome back! It’s season five of the Klassiki podcast. We’ve got ten more great episodes lined up for you, featuring some exciting interviews, historical deep dives, and a Halloween special later this month. In the meantime, get in touch with us at podcast@klassiki.online.  We’re kicking things off with some science fiction. Boris and Arkady Strugatsky were brothers who dominated postwar Soviet sci-fi with their philosophical, subversive, and hugely popular novels and short stories. The Strugatskys also had a second life on screen, collaborating with a wide array of directors on adaptations of their work – most famously Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. You can’t really understand eastern bloc sci-fi without the Strugatsky Brothers. But who were they, where did their remarkable visions come from, and why have their proven so appealing to so many filmmakers?  To answer these questions, host Sam Goff speaks with Marat Grinberg,​Professor of Russian and Humanities at Reed College, who’s written extensively on Soviet sci-fi and the Jewish experience under communism. They discuss the Strugatskys’ traumatic childhoods, the ways their work has been transformed by directors from the 60s to the Putin era, and how their Jewishness informed their work.  Subscribers can watch two Strugatsky adaptations on Klassiki now: Aleksandr Sokurov’s Days of Eclipse and Grigori Kromanov’s Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’ve reached the end season four! Thank you as always for listening along. We’ll be back in the autumn, so look out for that and make sure you’re subscribed in your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss out. In the meantime, we want to hear from you. Do you have questions, comments, complaints, or suggestions for the show? You can now email them to us at podcast@klassiki.online. Get in touch ahead of the new season. We’re closing out season four with a look at a fascinating and misunderstood part of Ukraine: the Donbas. This resource-rich region in the east of the country was celebrated as the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, but since 2014 has become synonymous with destruction and war after more than a decade of Russian aggression and occupation. It’s a region that has been subject to much controversy, within Ukraine as well as internationally, but its vibrant and diverse history is too often overlooked. It’s this history that Victoria Donovan has set out to capture in her fantastic new book, Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East. Victoria draws on her extensive travel and research in Donbas to move past the clichés and give a human perspective on events. Host Sam Goff sat down with her to discuss the book, and to explore how film has been used and abused in creating an image of the region. We’ve put together a playlist of some of the films discussed in this episode for Klassiki subscribers, which you can find here. Buy Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East here. Read an interview with Freefilmers here and explore their recent work here. Explore documentary material from the Donbas in the Urban Media Archive here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for a profile of the great Estonian actor Jüri Järvet – a cult hero of Soviet and Baltic film who overcame family trauma as a young man before bursting onto the international scene in the 1970s. In the space of just a few years, Jarvet helped to modernise Estonian cinema, worked with Tarkovsky, and played King Lear to huge critical and popular acclaim. Despite this, his story is not well known in the West. Read the original piece here and watch Järvet’s classic turns in Madness and Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week, we’re launching 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 this time around is prolific British artist and filmmaker Ben Rivers, whose latest feature, the post-apocalyptic tale Mare’s Nest, premieres in competition at the Locarno Film Festival this week. With that in mind, Ben has picked a fascinating quartet of titles for Klassiki: four films that explore the end of the world, whether literal or metaphorical, featuring sci-fi weirdness, nuclear paranoia, and the threat of social collapse. Host Sam Goff sat down with Ben to discuss the appeal of this End Times cinema, the unique nature of eastern European sci-fi, children on film, and the enduring influence of Aleksandr Sokurov on his work.  Make sure to explore Ben’s Klassiki Picks, available to subscribers from 7 August.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Critic, researcher, and friend of the show Alisa Goruleva is back on the pod this week for the second edition of the Kino Club, our watch-a-long exploration of Klassiki’s ever-expanding catalogue. Host Sam Goff asked Alisa to pick another film from our library that she hadn’t seen before to discuss. This time around, she plumped for Andrzej Munk’s 1958 war satire Eroica, a cynical deconstruction of the myths of military heroism.  Alisa and Sam discuss Munk’s tragically short career, his place among the titans of post-war Polish film, and Eroica’s blend of black humour, despair, and disillusioned humanism. Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Make sure to check out Alisa’s writing over on the Klassiki Journal, and leave us a review to let us know which films you’d like us to tackle next in the Kino Club.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal. Today is the seventieth birthday of one of the true greats: Béla Tarr, Hungary’s maestro of slow cinema melancholy. So, to celebrate, host Sam Goff is reading from our companion to the life and times of this icon of eastern European film – from his early days as a schoolboy anarchist to his position as a grandee of world cinema. Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of Hungarian titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

2025 is the centenary year of one of Soviet cinema’s true greats: Marlen Khutsiev, whose films from the fifties and sixties captured the excitement of the post-war years. If there was such a thing as the Soviet New Wave, then Khutsiev was its beating heart. In films like I Am Twenty and July Rain, he borrowed from the neorealists in Italy and iconoclasts in France to depict a society on the brink of transformation.  To celebrate Khutsiev in his 100th year, host Sam Goff is joined by Boris Nelepo, programmer, critic, and Co-Head of Programming at the DocLisboa Film Festival, who befriended the filmmaker at the end of his life.  Watch Khutsiev’s classic films I Am Twenty and Spring on Zarechnaya Street on Klassiki now and read Boris’s tribute to his friend here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal. Today, host Sam Goff reads an essay about the work of one of Baltic cinema’s great innovators, Rolands Kalniņš, aka the Latvian Godard, whose playfully political films staged a colourful protest against Soviet occupation. This piece was written by friend of the show Joshua Polanski, a critic specialising in Baltic film who listeners may remember from our episode in season three about Jonas Mekas. Read the original piece here and read more from Joshua on Baltic film on his site. And make sure to explore Klassiki’s collection of titles from the Baltic states. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

This week we’re trying something new on the pod: the first edition of the Klassiki Kino Club. We wanted to find a way of championing our ever-growing library of films with our listeners. So we asked a friend of the show to pick a title available on Klassiki that they had never seen before to watch for the first time – and then to jump on a call to offer their reactions and reflections.  Joining us today is Alisa Goruleva, a Russian film critic and researcher based in Berlin who’s recently been writing some wonderful pieces for the Klassiki Journal. Her choice of film was Confidence (1980) by Hungary’s István Szabó. Alisa and host Sam Goff get into the film’s take on gendered power dynamics and its depiction of a world at war. Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Make sure to check out Alisa’s writing over on the Klassiki Journal, and leave us a review to let us know which films you’d like us to tackle next in the Kino Club.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The cinema of communist Romania rarely gets a look in compared with the 21st-century New Wave of Cristi Puiu, Radu Jude, and co. At Klassiki we’ve just launched a new collection of classic Romanian titles from the 1960s and '70s that tries to redress the balance. From wartime epics to New Wave romance and subversive satire, these films reveal a different side of Romanian film and set the scene for contemporary favourites.  This week, host Sam Goff sits down with critic and programmer Flavia Dima to discuss this history and talk in depth about the four titles in our new collection. Watch these Romanian classics on Klassiki now and read Flavia’s writing on the period here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Welcome back! We’ve made it to season four of the Klassiki Podcast. We’re kicking off with a return guest: one of our very favourite filmmakers, Radu Jude. After the success of last year’s gig-economy satire Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Radu is back in 2025 with not one but two new films: Kontinental ‘25, an homage to Roberto Rossellini’s classic morality tale Europa ‘51, and what promises to be an unmissable take on the Dracula legend – watch out for that one arriving soon. Host Sam Goff sat down with Radu to discuss Transylvania, fascism, vampires, and TikTok. Listen to our previous episode with Radu here – and check out a selection of his brilliant shorts on Klassiki now. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’ve reached the end of the third season of the show! Thank you to everyone who’s listened along so far. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a five-star review or a comment on your podcast app of choice. We’ll be back soon with more great shows – subscribe now so you don’t miss a thing. At the end of April, we’ll be running our third annual partnership with the goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film. To preview this exciting season, host Sam Goff sits down with Heleen Gerritsen, who is stepping down in 2025 as director of the festival after eight years at the helm.  Heleen has been at the forefront of curating Eastern European film during a turbulent and tragic period for the region. She shares her perspectives on how to engage with the new realities facing filmmakers and film lovers, highlights goEast’s retrospective of the Indigenous filmmaker Anastasia Lapsui, and selects some of her favourite discoveries from her time at the festival. Klassiki’s partnership with goEast runs from 24 April - 22 May. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the Slovak maestro of the macabre, Juraj Herz, written and read by Sam Goff. Best known for his controversial and politically charged 1969 horror film The Cremator, Herz remains the great outsider of the Czech New Wave – a Holocaust survivor who mined his personal trauma to produce some of the most striking gothic visions to be found anywhere in communist-era cinema. Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of classic Czech and Slovak titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.