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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

14:52

The moral maze of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/04/20

We’ve reached the end of season six. Thank you to all our subscribers and listeners old and new. We’ll be back in the summer – but in the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and please leave us a review and a five-star rating. Thank you!For this final episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on one of the masterpieces of Polish cinema: Krzysztof Kieślowski’s monumental Dekalog. Ten hour-long films inspired by the Ten

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34:24

Artavazd Pelechian: poetry at a distance

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/04/13

This week, cinema audiences in London are getting the rare chance to see a selection of films by the great Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian as part of the Open City Documentary Festival. Pelechian’s work, described by Serge Daney as “a missing link in the true history of the cinema”, cuts across documentary, fiction, and essay film, exploring national and natural history, socialist labour, biblical symbolism, and technological progress and catastrophe. The Pelechian programme at Open City has

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41:55

The Klassiki Kino Club: Getting to Know the Big Wide...

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/04/06

It’s been a while since we opened up the Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of Klassiki’s ever-expanding catalogue. We’re putting that right this week with a brand new guest: critic, programmer, and teacher Savina Petkova. As always, we asked Savina to pick a film from our library that she hadn't seen before, watch it, then jump on a call to discuss. Her pick was Getting to Know the Big Wide World, the 1978 construction site romance by the inimitable Kira Muratova. Savina and host Sam Goff find

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43:14

Peter Strickland heads back to the East

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/03/30

Last week we launched 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 British filmmaker Peter Strickland, director of The Duke of Burgundy, Berberian Sound Studio, and In Fabric, among other weird and wonderful titles. Peter has a special link to the world of Eastern European film: after a number of years living in Slovakia and Hungary, he burst onto the international stage in 2009

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53:41

The Czechoslovak New Wave and beyond

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/03/23

When it comes to Central and Eastern European film, few movements loom larger than the Czechoslovak New Wave. Emerging in a period of political liberalisation and protest, the New Wave produced formally and politically audacious films before the so-called Prague Spring was crushed by a Soviet invasion in 1968. 2026 marks 60 years since the release of canonical films like Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, Jiří Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains, and Jan Němec’s A Report on the Party and Guests. But what

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32:51

To dance is to resist: queer life in wartime Ukraine

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/03/16

This week sees the return of one of the highlights of London’s cinematic calendar: BFI Flare, the largest LGBTQ+ film festival in Europe. One of the world premieres this year is To Dance is to Resist, a new documentary from German filmmaker and musician Julian Lautenbacher. Julian has spent five years travelling to Ukraine to document the personal and professional lives of Jay and Vol’demar, dancers in Kyiv’s vibrant underground queer club scene. His film captures a couple and a community finding

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40:33

Building film culture in Uzbekistan

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/03/09

For many cinephiles, the Central Asian states remain something of a blind spot. A case in point is Uzbekistan, whose film industry stretches back to the silent era, but which rarely comes on our radar in the Anglophone world. To provide some insight into what it’s like to do the work in this part of the world, this week host Sam Goff speaks with Julia Shaginurova. Julia, together with her partner Michael Borodin, is at the heart of efforts to build an independent film culture in Uzbekistan. She’s a

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46:48

100 years of Andrzej Wajda

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/03/02

This week sees the one hundredth birthday of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema. Until 26 March, Klassiki subscribers can watch Wajda’s epochal double header Man of Marble and Man of Iron, about the history of worker resistance in communist Poland, alongside two of his great literary adaptations: Siberian Lady Macbeth and The Promised Land. With a career running from the 1950s until the 2010s, it can be hard to know where to start with Wajda – but one thread running throughout his

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16:01

Roman Bondarchuk’s Ukrainian badlands

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/02/23

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for a profile of the Ukrainian filmmaker Roman Bondarchuk, whose deadpan, absurdist comedies cut through the myth-making around his country by investigating the “no man’s land” of his native Kherson region. Bondarchuk’s recent feature The Editorial Office was completed during the full-scale invasion by Russia and speaks with particular clarity to the challenges that Ukraine was facing before the war and will

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40:59

Sergei Parajanov in love and war

The Klassiki Podcast ·

2026/02/16

Welcome to season six of the Klassiki Podcast! We’re kicking things off by celebrating one of our favourites: Sergei Parajanov. Our new collection Perspectives on Parajanov, available now for subscribers, features the great man’s final two features, The Legend of Suram Fortress and Ashik Kerib. We’re presenting the films alongside Zara Jian’s revelatory documentary, I Will Revenge this World with Love – S. Paradjanov (2024). Against the backdrop of the war on Ukraine and ethnic cleansing in

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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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