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.

This week, Klassiki is launching a new collection of Russian documentaries, exploring life in the country as repressions continue to intensify and the war on Ukraine stretches into its fourth year. On the podcast this week, we’re highlighting another recent documentary that deserves wider attention – Masha Chernaya’s The Shards, which won best film at the DocLisboa festival last year. Shot in a raw, DIY style during the first months of the war, the film sees Chernaya and her cohort reflecting on a homeland that has changed beneath their feet. We see glimpses of underground culture, from raves to fight clubs, as well as an intimate exposure to personal tragedy as the filmmaker’s mother battles against cancer. Host Sam Goff sits down with Chernaya to explore about how she went about documenting the world around her and how she balanced the personal and political struggles she encountered on the way. Our new season of Russian documentaries launches on Klassiki this Thursday 3 April. Find out more here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

“The godfather of American avant-garde cinema“, Jonas Mekas left his native Lithuania in 1944, and a few years later moved to New York. His friendships and collaborations with the likes of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and Yoko Ono helped to consolidate the downtown art scene, and his impressionistic “diary films”, compiled from footage of his life that he obsessively shot on his handheld Bolex camera, have proved hugely influential on experimental film ever since.  Mekas never lost sight of his native Lithuania, returning to themes of dislocation and home throughout his career. His work speaks to the cinema traditions of the Baltic region more broadly. His attachment to Lithuanian national culture produced controversy at the end of his life when questions were raised about his work under Nazi occupation in the 1940s.  To untangle the question of Mekas, Lithuania, and the avant-garde, host Sam Goff speaks with Josh Polanski, a critic who specialises in cinema from the Baltic states. You can find Josh’s writing on Baltic film here, and explore our collection of films from the region here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

In 2020, Belarus was rocked by mass protests following fraudulent presidential elections that returned autocratic leader Aleksandr Lukashenko to power. The new feature film from Belarusian-Polish director Mara Tamkovich, Under the Grey Sky, is based on the true story of a journalist, Kateryna Andreevna, who was arrested and charged with treason for broadcasting police brutality against protestors. Under the Grey Sky is screening across the UK now as part of this year’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival. This week on the show, host Sam Goff sits down with Mara to discuss the real life events behind her film, and to try and shed light on the situation in Belarus – a country in the grip of a brutal regime, and one that remains party to the war in Ukraine, but which is too often absent from conversations about the region.  You can find information about screenings of Under the Grey Sky at this year’s Kinoteka Film Festival, both in London and on tour throughout the UK, on the festival site. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

2025 is the centenary year of Wojciech Jerzy Has – one of Poland’s greatest and most misunderstood filmmakers. A full retrospective of Has’s films is currently underway across the UK: from his surrealist masterpieces The Saragossa Manuscript and The Hourglass Sanatorium, to his never-before-screened shorts. To set the scene for this retrospective, host Sam Goff speaks with its curator, Polish film expert Michael Brooke, about Has’s peculiar place in Polish film history, his unique approach to literary adaptations, and the dreamworlds he conjured onscreen. You can find information about all the Has screenings at this year’s Kinoteka Film Festival, both in London and on tour throughout the UK, on the festival site. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Artist, guru, witch, muse. The cinematic polymath Ester Krumbachová was an essential figure behind many of the classics of the Czech New Wave. But Krumbachová herself remains an elusive figure, marginalised in histories of female filmmaking. In recent years, this has begun to change. Krumbachová’s sole directorial effort, the romantic parody Murdering the Devil, has been restored and screened worldwide. It’s coming to the UK this month, with three screenings as part of this year’s Borderlines Film Festival, in Hereford, Ludlow, and Malvern, and Klassiki subscribers can watch the restoration on the site now. Host Sam Goff sat down with writer and curator Rachel Pronger to discuss Krumbachová’s role in the Czech New Wave, her fall from grace, and what her work can teach us about feminist filmmaking today. Get your tickets for the Borderlines Film Festival screenings of Murdering the Devil. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

In this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the Soviet-Ukrainian director Larisa Shepitko, written and read by host Sam Goff. One of the most significant female filmmakers to emerge from the Soviet system, Shepitko’s career was cut short at the age of just 41 when she was killed in a car crash while location scouting for her fifth feature. Her surviving work reflects her experiences as a child of war and dislocation and remains vital to our understanding of the post-Soviet world. Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of classic Soviet titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are among the jewels in the crown of British cinema. One half of this national institution, Emeric Pressburger, was a Hungarian Jewish refugee – a background rarely commented on in discussions of the duo’s achievements. He brought Central European sensibilities to the British public – but how do we locate the Hungarian element in the Archers?  This week, host Sam Goff welcomes back film historian and curator Ian Christie to the pod. Ian knew Pressburger at the end of his life and, along with the likes of Martin Scorsese, helped to kickstart the Powell and Pressburger revival in the late 1970s – so he was perfectly placed to discuss the life and times of this fascinating figure. Subscribers can explore our own collection of classic Hungarian titles here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The Klassiki Podcast is back! To kick off our third season, we're stepping into the studio with Stephen and Timothy Quay, aka the Quay Brothers.  The duo’s career spans five decades and has seen them craft features, shorts, music videos, adverts, and installations – all in their unmistakable signature style combining stop motion and live action, surrealist flourishes, and an eye for the macabre. Their new feature film, 20 years in the making, is an adaptation of The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass by the Polish author Bruno Schulz. And we’re delighted that the Brothers have curated a new season of titles for Klassiki subscribers, launching this Thursday 6th February. Host Sam Goff sat down with the Brothers in their London studio, the Atelier Koninck, to discuss their long personal and creative relationship with Eastern Europe, from their student days in the 1960s to their latest film.   Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is screening at this year’s Kinoteka Film Festival: get your tickets here. Klassiki Picks with the Quay Brothers runs on the site from 13 February - 6 March. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

We’ve reached the end of the second 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 in 2025 with a new season, bigger and better than before. For the final episode of the season, we’re dipping back in to the archive of the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the groundbreaking collaboration between director Mikhail Kalatozov and cameraman Sergei Urusevsky. Over just seven years and three films, the duo turned Soviet cinema on its head with their revolutionary cinematography and depth of feeling, winning the Palme d’Or along the way.  Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of classic Soviet titles, including Kalatozov’s Salt for Svanetia. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Host Sam Goff speaks to Armenian director Shoghakat Vardanyan about her remarkable debut, 1489. In 2020, Vardanyan’s 21-year-old brother went missing days into the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan. With no prior filmmaking experience, Shoghakat picked up her phone and started recording herself and her parents as they began a gruelling quest for information. The resulting film is a portrait of family grief and resilience, in which we watch a young woman learning to express herself through film in real time. On this week’s episode, Shoghakat talks about the emotional experience of making the film and becoming a celebrated director by accident.  1489 is screening at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London on Saturday 7 December as part of the inaugural London Armenian Film Festival. Buy tickets for the screening here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.