FilmEN CC
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
Three young women arrive in Moscow in the late 1950s. Twenty years later one of them has everything except love.
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Stalker
A guide leads a writer and a scientist into the Zone, a forbidden place where a room is said to grant your deepest wish.
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The Diamond Arm
An ordinary man on a cruise is mistaken for a smuggler and comes home with jewels hidden in a plaster cast on his arm.
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The Cranes Are Flying
When war comes in 1941, a young Moscow woman's fiancé volunteers for the front, and her life falls apart while she waits.
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White Sun of the Desert
A Red Army soldier walking home across Central Asia is stuck guarding a bandit's harem in the middle of the desert.
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Office Romance
A timid statistician courts his icy boss to win a promotion, and both of them get far more than they planned.
▶ Watch freeWatch classic Soviet films free, with English subtitles
45 hand-picked Mosfilm classics, from Oscar winners to the comedies every Russian knows by heart. Each film streams from the studio's own YouTube channel, legally and free, with an English guide to what you are watching.
Pick a mood
Start here
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2 partsEN CC
Office Romance
2 partsEN CC
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
FilmEN CC
White Sun of the Desert
FilmEN CC
Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession
FilmEN CC
Gentlemen of Fortune
FilmEN CC
Mimino
FilmEN CC
The Girls
FilmEN CC
Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia
FilmEN CC
The Elusive Avengers
Oscar and festival winners
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Soviet comedy classics
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The Diamond Arm
FilmEN CC
Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession
FilmEN CC
Gentlemen of Fortune
2 partsEN CC
Office Romance
FilmEN CC
The Twelve Chairs
2 partsEN CC
The Golden Calf
FilmEN CC
Garage
FilmEN CC
Afonya
FilmEN CC
Mimino
FilmEN CC
Autumn Marathon
FilmEN CC
Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia
2 partsEN CC
That Munchhausen
FilmEN CC
Jazzmen
FilmEN CC
Shirli-Myrli
The war on screen
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Collections
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4 films
Eldar Ryazanov
The king of Soviet 'sad comedy': office life, garages and hussars.
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3 films
Leonid Gaidai
Slapstick, songs and lines the whole country knows by heart.
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4 films
Georgiy Danelia
Gentle, funny and a little melancholy films about ordinary people.
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8 films
Epics, legends and fairy tales
Knights, witches, sea captains and a baron who flew on a cannonball.
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Browse the catalogue →
Why watch Soviet films?
Soviet cinema gave the world Eisenstein's montage, Tarkovsky's poetry and Kurosawa's only film made outside Japan. It also produced hundreds of warm, very funny popular films that are almost unknown outside the former USSR, because they were rarely subtitled.
Mosfilm, the largest studio of the Soviet era, now publishes its restored films on YouTube for free, many with English subtitles. This site is a guide to the best of them: what to watch first, what each film is about, and why people still love it.