If you are bored of the regular American movies on OTTs, exploring foreign films might be the next best thing to keep you entertained. Netflix has bought a few great movies made in Russia that authentically depict their history, language and lifestyle. If you are already exposed to russian alternative, english films set in other places, these may be a great starting point for some new variety of netflix movies!
Attention all Russain Leaners! If you’re one among the fans who are looking to learn Russian language like native Russian speakers and get a better grip on Russian words then you should, of course, watch Russian movies through which you will learn Russian.
Below is a list of the top 20 Russian movies streaming on Netflix. The list also includes several movies promoting Russian history, the Russian revolution, soviet union activities and Russian culture.
20. Fatal Illusions
- Director: Anna Elizabeth James
- Writer: Anna Elizabeth James
- Cast: Dermot Mulroney, Kristin Davis, Shanola Hampton
- IMDb Rating: 3.7/10
The celebrated illusionists, the Romanov brothers, put up their last show before they end their partnership. But what ensues is a tragedy as one of their assistants disappears from the tank full of water. On their stage headphones, a mystery voice claims that he has the girl and will kill her if the show does not go on, despite having messed with their equipment.
19. Break
- Director: Tigran Sahakyan
- Writer: Denis Kosyakov, Alexandr Nazarov, Olga Rud
- Cast: Irina Antonenko, Andrey Nazimov, Denis Kosyakov
- IMDb Rating: 4.6/10
A troupe of 3 guys and two girls goes on a holiday to celebrate New Year’s at the top of a mountain. But this quickly turns into a tragic nightmare when their cable car halts when they are crossing an abyss. Fear and desperation take over, causing a fall out between the group.
18. Chernobyl: Abyss (2019)
- Director: Danila Kozlovskiy
- Writer: Djamel Bennecib, Elena Ivanova, Aleksey Kazakov
- Cast: Danila Kozlovskiy, Oksana Akinshina, Filipp Avdeev
- IMDb Rating: 5.1/10
Chernobyl: The Abyss is the main major Russian component film about the aftermath of the explosion at the Chernobyl thermal energy plant when many people gave their lives to clean up the disaster site and effectively avert a significantly bigger catastrophe that could have turned a large portion of Europe into a terrible rejection zone.
Alexey, a firefighter at the power station, is the film’s unlikely legend. On a perilous mission to discharge water from a repository beneath the devouring reactor, he is aided by Valery, an expert, and Boris, a tactical jumper.
They lack the capacity to cope with real preparation; the water in the overcrowded passageways they must cross is becoming increasingly sultry as the liquid reactor centre leaks closer and closer. The three men go into the depths of the reactor building, willing to give up their lives to avert a far more serious disaster.
The main character, firefighter Alexey, works at the Chernobyl thermal energy facility but is pondering going to Kiev to avoid wasting his life in this backwater. Overall, he stumbles into his former love interest Olga at a stylist’s and the power unit detonates. As a result, Alexey must forego relocating and instead travel to the epicentre of the disaster to prevent radiation from spreading to Europe.
The Chernobyl disaster, which inspired a blockbuster HBO small-scale series in 2019, is mostly ignored in Russian films . Furthermore, Chernobyl 1986 does little to modify this.
The film’s authors demonstrated that it should not be considered as yet another attempt to examine the psyche of the Soviet administrative system or identify the culpable persons. Rather, it is a consistently created huge budget tragedy film about the individual display of maybe the first seller (played by Kozlovsky himself), set against the backdrop of those awful events.
17. Kresty (2020)
- Director: Angelina Golikova
- Writer: Elizaveta Koniakina, Sergei Miroshnichenko
- Cast: Angelina Golikova, Elizaveta Koniakina, Sergei Miroshnichenko
- IMDb Rating: 5.6/10
Kresty is one of Russia’s oldest and largest detention institutions, located in the heart of Saint Petersburg. Kresty’s historical setting echoes Russia’s historical backdrop. The movie includes popular russian actors like Angelina Golikova, Elizaveta Koniakina, Sergei Miroshnichenko.
Throughout the jail’s 130-year history, many people have passed through its gates: progressives, engineers, commanders, professors, authors, researchers, criminals, and chronic executioners.
The Kresty prison is essentially society, where human indecencies, as well as power, opportunity, and composure, emerge without limit.
16. Chagall-Malevich
- Director: Aleksandr Mitta
- Writer: Aleksandr Mitta, Kristii Schneider
- Cast: Leonid Bichevin, Anatoliy Belyy, Kristii Schneider
- IMDb Rating: 5.9/10
To recreate the world of folklore ballad and myth originally made by Marc Chagall, this film serves as an ode to his work. What unfolds on the screen is a well-dramatized display of creativity, facts, and exaggeration inspired by his dreams and wild imagination.
15. 8 First Dates
- Director: David Dodson, Sasha Malarevsky, Alexander Yurchikov
- Writer: Ekaterina Gordetskaya, Studiya Kvartal-95, Andrey Yakovlev
- Cast: Oksana Akinshina, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Denis Nikiforov
- IMDb Rating: 6.1/10
A crazy comic tale where the protagonists wake up in the same bed every morning, regardless of where they fall asleep. They soon realize that they are stuck in a time loop and eventually get to know each other better.
14. Mermaid
- Director: Stephen Chow
- Writer: Hing-Ka Chan, Stephen Chow, Chi-Keung Fung
- Cast: Chao Deng, Show Lo, Yuqi Zhang
- IMDb Rating: 6.2/10
A shy little girl grows up trusting that she has a superpower to make wishes come true. But as she becomes an adult, she must face reality when she travels to Moscow and faces struggles, emotions and life head first.
13. Secret Magic Control Agency
- Director: Aleksey Tsitsilin
- Writer: Analisa LaBianco, Vladimir Nikolaev, Jeffery Spencer
- Cast: Nicholas Corda, Sylvana Joyce, Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld
- IMDb Rating: 6.2/10
The main characters from a popular fairy-tale for children, Hansel and Gretel, are recruited as secret agents. They are forced to use their wit, quick thinking, teamwork, and magic to find and rescue a missing king on their latest mission.
Hansel and Gretel, the Secret Magic Control Agency’s two top experts, are dispatched to confront the witch of the Gingerbread House.
12. Major Grom: Plague Doctor (2021)
- Director: Oleg Trofim
- Writer: Vladimir Besedin, Evgeny Eronin, Artyom Gabrelyanov
- Cast: Tikhon Zhiznevskiy, Lyubov Aksyonova, Sergei Goroshko
- IMDb Rating: 6.3/10
This is one of the most expensive and intriguing Russian movie projects of 2021. It is based on Russian (which is extremely intriguing!) realistic novels of the same name published by Bubble Comics.
Police Major Igor Grom is well-known across St. Petersburg for his perceptive personality and hopeless attitude toward criminals. However, everything changes dramatically as a person appears behind the Plague Doctor’s veil.
After declaring that his city is “infected with the disease of chaos,” he begins “therapy,” murdering people all at once with the use of money and great public position. Society is up in arms. The officers are elderly. Surprisingly, Igor has difficulties in the examination, the outcome of which might determine the fate of the entire city.
This common superhuman behaviour creates a specific realistic book setting, similar to Nolan’s Gotham City. There is a gaudy bar Golden Dragon filled with the entire evil foundation, the police base camp is located in a royal home, and Grom, like Batman, leans towards rooftops.
An ordinary traffic officer named Petya Vasyutin (played by Dmitry Nagiyev – Russia’s most outspoken man after Putin, according to public opinion polls) is looking to marry, but accidentally encounters a public VIP and goes on a drinking spree with her. Petya needs to find a way out of this jam while the lady of the hour is suffering.
The parody, inspired in part by Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, is a component of director Zhora Kryzhovnikov’s marketing strategy of exaggerating everything to the point of inconceivable obscenity. This is how this film should be viewed: as a completely ridiculous spoof for a fun night out.
11. Dovlatov
- Director: Aleksey German Jr
- Writer: Aleksey German Jr, Yulia Tupikina
- Cast: Milan Maric, Danila Kozlovskiy, Helena Sujecka
- IMDb Rating: 6.4/10
The movie spans the timeline of six days in the life of the cutting-edge writer who wrote beyond the narrow views and limits of Soviet Russia in the 1970s. Sergei Dovlatov struggled to maintain and display his ability alongside poet Joseph Brodsky.
Related: The Best Russian TV Shows & Movies on Netflix
10. Black Sea
- Director: Kevin Macdonald
- Writer: Dennis Kelly
- Cast: Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn
- IMDb Rating: 6.4/10
A well-experienced submarine captain loses his job. He decides to get together a crew of misfits to find a sunken treasure rumored to be forgotten deep in the Black Sea. When greed and frenzy take over their travel, the mission goes south and turns into a fight for survival.
Following ten years of grueling labor at a maritime rescue organization, Robinson, the recently retired submarine chief, decides to risk everything in quest of a fabled hidden treasure: a submerged Nazi U-boat stocked with gold ingots of infinite value.
Robinson organizes a hand-picked mixed crew of hostile specialists to sweep the vast bottom of the viral Black Sea in a rusted Soviet submarine in order to unearth the unclaimed reward beneath the nose of the Russians and their menacing maritime navy. Regardless, when avarice overcomes the all-around isolated group, the commitment to an analogous offer swiftly fades.
09. Sputnik (2020)
- Director: Egor Abramenko
- Writer: Oleg Malovichko, Andrey Zolotarev
- Cast: Oksana Akinshina, Fedor Bondarchuk, Pyotr Fyodorov
- IMDb Rating: 6.4/10
At the Cold War level, a Soviet shuttle crashes lands after a failed mission, leaving the leader as the only survivor. Something dangerous may have returned to Earth with the cop after a respected Russian doctor assesses his psychological health. Sputnik is a great movie for everyone who wants to be among the one for watching russian movies
The director was undoubtedly influenced by Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing, but Sputnik stands out among numerous versions of the plot. In any case, it is intricately interesting. It’s not just a vintage loathing, but an “imaginative extreme noir,” where aesthetic compositions are as important as surprising outcomes.
08. Flight Crew
- Director: Nikolay Lebedev
- Writer: Tikhon Kornev, Yuriy Korotkov, Nikolay Kulikov
- Cast: Danila Kozlovskiy, Vladimir Mashkov, Agne Grudyte
- IMDb Rating: 6.6/10
When a distress call for help is received from a volcanic island, a Russian airliner set out on a rescue mission. This takes them further into danger than they ever thought they’d go and turns out to be a fight for the victims’ lives as well as their own.
A story of bravery, compassion, and human pride being scrutinized by a cold-hearted force of nature. A young pilot gets discharged from the military flying corps after refusing a preposterous request.
He obtains a new job as a co-pilot for a common carrier. He isn’t centered on ideal circumstances with his new colleagues because he is passionately legitimate and direct. During a trip to Asia, his crew receives a distress signal from a volcanic island and decides to attempt a salvage effort.
07. Hardcore Henry
- Director: Ilya Naishuller
- Writer: Ilya Naishuller, Will Stewart
- Cast: Sharlto Copley, Tim Roth, Haley Bennett
- IMDb Rating: 6.7/10
A recently resurrected cyborg, Henry, must save his wife, who is also his creator, from the grasps of a psychotic villain AKAN who has telekinetic skills. Fighting along with Henry is Jimmy, who is his only hope to survive the day. The movie takes place over only one day, in Moscow, Russia.
06. Two Days
- Director: Avdotya Smirnova
- Writer: Avdotya Smirnova, Anna Parmas
- Cast: Fedor Bondarchuk, Kseniya Rappoport, Evgeniy Muravich
- IMDb Rating: 6.9/10
Petr Drozdov, a senior administrator from Russia, Moscow, accepts the governor’s appeal to demolish a rural museum of Russian literature. Masha is a young student who works in the museum, and she decides to plead against this and demands that it be kept safe.
05. Born to Be Free
- Director: Tatiana Beley, Gayane Petrosyan
- Writer: Gayane Petrosyan
- Cast: Manos Krystalis
- IMDb Rating: 7.5/10
Casting light on the abuse of sea mammals, this gut-wrenching documentary reflects the difficulty of 18 Beluga whales kept in captivity for years. They were all initially intended for U.S. aquariums but were not permitted due to a new law. This left the group of Belugas to live in small tanks in Russia, and eventually, after six years of captivity, one whale died while the others were severely ill. Born to be Free is a great movie for people are the new Russian language learners.
Born To Be Free is a powerful and incisive video about the global trade of wild marine vertebrates created by three daring, free-jumping authors, Gaya, Tanya, and Julia.
Their method leads us to the most isolated areas of Russia, where we see, for the first time, the incredible abuse that whales, dolphins, and walruses are subjected to, as we uncover the debasement at the heart of this brutal global enterprise.
A depressing and horrible story of eighteen belugas (white bowhead whales) lounging in tanks on the sweltering Black Sea shore.
A tale that has brought us here – freedivers who normally share and dive with free dolphins and whales in their local component, in the background of countless dolphinariums, and have helped reveal different horrible secrets and hidden truths.
04. The Watchman
- Director: Zack Snyder
- Writer: Dave Gibbons, David Hayter, Alex Tse
- Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino
- IMDb Rating: 7.6/10
Vlad, is a forty-year-old watchman in an old asylum that is soon to be demolished. One night, a couple, Vera and Stas, arrive at the sanatorium. On hearing their story of being on the run from their friends and family, Vlad is reminded of his past and how he runs from it. He decides to help them stay safe and, in the process, uncover things about himself and the couple.
03. Loveless
- Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
- Writer: Oleg Negin, Andrey Zvyagintsev
- Cast: Maryana Spivak, Aleksey Rozin, Matvey Novikov
- IMDb Rating: 7.6/10
A couple in Russia goes through a terrible and ugly divorce, filled with fights, blames, and tempers. They both have new partners and cannot wait to leave each other until their 12-year-old son vanishes after listening to one of their arguments.
Boris and Zhenya, a Moscow couple, are still living under the same roof and are in the dreadful final stages of a terrible separation.
Under those circumstances, as both have actively sought new collaborators, the abuses pour down like rain in this dangerous family conflict zone, always circling the unresolvable and pressing issue of Alyosha’s authority, their 12-year-old just kid.
Unheard, despised, or, more importantly, unattractive, the thoughtful and unhappy child feels like an unbearable weight; in any case, what he can be certain of is that he can hear every word. As a result, by the time Boris and Zhenya realize Alyosha has been missing for over two days, it is past the point of no return.
02. Brother (1997)
- Director: Aleksey Balabanov
- Writer: Aleksey Balabanov
- Cast: Sergey Bodrov, Viktor Sukhorukov, Svetlana Pismichenko
- IMDb Rating: 7.8/10
Danila, who has recently been discharged from the military, travels to his more experienced brother – a hoodlum and an executioner – to begin a new life in St. Petersburg, where he is quickly organized in the criminal world and asked to kill someone. His new life begins there.
He meets new people, including a young girl, and becomes a big fan of the musical group “Nautilus Pompillius,” but now he’s an executioner, and realizing that killing is easier for him than living drives him to realize he’s on the wrong track.
Despite a relatively pedestrian narrative, this is one of the most important film establishments in post-Soviet cinema.
The story of a still “green” man who is thrust into the cruel world of the 1990s, coordinated by Aleksei Balabanov, has earned faction status in Russia.
This is mostly due to its accurate representation of its time in all of its unique nuances, which add up to a visual reference book of that era: from businesses selling chewing gum and CDs to leather coat-clad crooks and young females at rave events.
01. Icarus
- Director: Bryan Fogel
- Writer: Bryan Fogel, Mark Monroe, Jon Bertain
- Cast: Bryan Fogel, Dave Zabriskie, Don Catlin
- IMDb Rating: 7.9/10
Set to bring to light the truth about doping in athletics, the facts uncovered by a Russian scientist turn this movie into a geopolitical mystery. Between an unexplained death and Olympic gold medals lies the story that will expose one of the largest scandals in history.
This list of movies is subject to change with additions and deletions from the current Netflix directory and incorporates some of their current best Russian movies. These are all highly rated both by the critics and the audience and are worth a watch. So, go ahead, log in to your Netflix account and start watching all the netflix movies that interests you today!
