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PODCAST

The Klassiki Podcast

Delve into the wide world of Eastern European film with the Klassiki Podcast. Featuring interviews, roundtable discussions, recorded essays, and more, we take you beyond the headlines to explore the past, present, and future of this fascinating region. Sign up to Klassiki today to gain access to our ever-evolving library of classic and contemporary titles, as well as filmmaker interviews, video essays and introductions, programme notes, and much more.

tv & film film interviews

All Episodes

16:26

Rewriting history in Aleksandr Askoldov’s Commissar

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/12/15

We’ve reached the end of season 5! Thank you to everyone for listening along. We’ll be back in 2026, but for now, happy holidays and speak to you soon.To close out the season, we’re returning to the ever-expanding archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal and an essay on one of the great lost talents of the Soviet studio system. Aleksandr Askoldov only completed one feature film in his career, 1967’s excoriating anti-war drama Commissar, before falling foul of the censors and disappearing into

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35:40

The Klassiki Kino Club: An Unusual Exhibition

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/12/08

Friend of the show Alisa Goruleva is back on the pod this week for the latest edition of the Kino Club, our watch-a-long exploration of Klassiki’s film catalogue. As always, host Sam Goff set Alisa the task of picking a title from our library that she hadn’t seen before to discuss. Her choice this time around was very fitting: An Unusual Exhibition, the 1968 comedy of artistic frustration by the great Georgian filmmaker Eldar Shengelaia, who sadly passed away in August of this year. Alisa and Sam

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43:42

Deciphering The Saragossa Manuscript

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/12/01

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

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15:05

Lucian Pintilie: godfather of the Romanian New Wave

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/11/24

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

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34:59

Eastern notions: celebrating Ali Khamraev

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/11/17

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

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37:33

Julia Loktev on My Undesirable Friends: Part One –...

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/11/10

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

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31:54

The Klassiki Kino Club: The Return of the Projectionist

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/11/03

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

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41:12

Horror behind the Iron Curtain

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/10/27

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

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22:55

Mother Teresa and Persian poetry at the London Film...

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/10/20

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

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44:01

The Strugatsky Brothers on screen

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/10/13

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

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49:24

Cinema of the Donbas

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/08/18

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

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13:54

From Shakespeare to Solaris: the otherworldly career...

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/08/11

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

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43:26

Film at the end of the world, with Ben Rivers

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/08/04

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

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37:42

The Klassiki Kino Club: Andrzej Munk’s Eroica

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/07/28

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

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19:57

Béla Tarr, Hungary’s maestro of melancholy

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/07/21

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

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44:15

One hundred years of Marlen Khutsiev

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/07/14

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,

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14:03

Rolands Kalniņš: riding the Baltic New Wave with...

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/07/07

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

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33:47

The Klassiki Kino Club: István Szabó’s Confidence

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/06/30

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

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47:05

Romania before the New Wave

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/06/23

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

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35:51

From Rossellini to Dracula: Radu Jude in Transylvania

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2025/06/16

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

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