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Mubi, Curzon Home Cinema and BFI Player aficionados roll up: there’s a new kid in town: Klassiki is a brand new streaming platform for devotees of – and newbies to – Russian and Central Asian cinema and it launches tomorrow.
If you’re a Russophile, a film student, someone who knows their Abdykalykov from their Zvyagintsev, or are just keen to explore something new after a year of solid Netflix, it’ll offer a whole gamut of movies often unavailable elsewhere.
Smashing the vodka bottle on its hull and sending it on its way is Ralph Fiennes. The actor and filmmaker – who has directed a Russian film of his own in Rudolf Nureyev biopic ‘The White Crow’ – will be talking Russian cinema at a special launch Q&A at 7pm on Wednesday, February 3. Head to the official site to tune in.
Klassiki will go live straight after that, hosting more than 60 classic films from Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Ukraine from filmmakers as diverse as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Andrei Konchalovsky (who recently returned with the terrific ‘Dear Comrades!’) and Kira Muratova.
What else can you find on the platform? Plenty of interviews, essays and criticism, as well as a specially curated ‘pick of the week’ every seven days. It is, promises Klassiki, ‘a treasure trove for people meeting Russian cinema for the first time.’
And what does it cost? It’s completely free until April 4, at which point a month subscription will set you back £5.99/month (if you sign up prior to April 4, it’s only £2.99/month).
Read our review of Ralph Fiennes’s latest film, Netflix’s archeological treasure ‘The Dig’.
Time Out’s pick of the 50 Best Foreign Language Films of All Time.