Engineer Nadia is past 30 and worried that she is not married yet. Schoolfriend Susanna decides to help her by getting hold of some fashionable outfits on the black market, and teaching her the methods of "scientific seduction." But the main thing is self-training, which involves repeating the mantra: "I am the most charming and attractive."

See for yourself how it all turns out in what is one of the most popular comedy films of the perestroika era.

This story of several families in Russia set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars from 1805 to 1812 won an Oscar for best foreign film. Critics consider it to be the best adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's epic. The roles of Andrei Bolkonsky and Anatol Kuragin were played by Soviet sex symbols Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Vasily Lanovoy.

Spend a whole weekend relishing this glorious moving canvas (four films in total), and then compare it with the recent BBC series.

A key work in the filmography of cult director Tarkovsky, The Mirror is a stream-of-consciousness meditation on memory. In the picture, he shows fragmentary scenes from his own childhood: village home, mother, coming-of-age, war. The film incorporates poems composed and read by Soviet poet Arseny Tarkovsky, the director’s father.

Yuri Detochkin is a Soviet Robin Hood. He steals cars from the rich, sells them, and gives the money to orphanages. An investigator uncovers the crime, but on learning about Detochkin’s noble aims finds himself unable to arrest the thief.

One of the most popular Soviet films, it was intended to depict the ideal Soviet citizen, for whom conscience and social equality are paramount.

This historical film by the cult director and innovator Eisenstein, commissioned by the Soviet state, was intended to raise public morale and patriotic spirit.

The tight schedule meant that the large-scale Battle of the Ice scene, in which the knights were supposed to fall through a frozen lake, had to be shot in summer. The “ice” was asphalt sprinkled with salt and wooden boards painted white. 

Have you ever been to a pioneer camp? Watch this movie and you will have. Playing cards behind the leaders’ backs, real friendships, and highly inventive pranks—what’s not to like? And above all, preparing for the all-important parents’ day show. A family comedy from the 1960s that has modern viewers laughing out loud.

This is a screen adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's historical play about the ‘Time of Troubles’ in Russia at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. After the death of Feodor, the last tsar of the Rurik dynasty, a struggle for the throne unfolds between his wife's brother, Boris Godunov and Grigory Otrepyev, who pretends to be the miraculously surviving Tsarevich Dmitry.

Oscar-winning director Sergei Bondarchuk played the lead role in the movie. According to critics, ‘Boris Godunov’ was the best Soviet historical movie ever made. 

This movie adaptation of Anton Chekhov's novella of the same name imitates the documentary genre. In interviews, patients and doctors at a psychiatric hospital recount how the clinic's former head physician, Andrei Ragin, himself became mentally ill. In addition to the actors, the movie features real patients from the hospital.

The movie won the prize for Best Foreign Language Film at the Tehran International Film Festival. Lead actor Vladimir Ilyin, meanwhile, was awarded the ‘Nika National Award’ for Best Actor.

Although few modern viewers would voluntarily sit through this epic, it is rightly included in all textbooks on the history of cinema. Legendary director Sergei Eisenstein shows events from the first Russian revolution of 1905: sailors aboard the Potemkin refuse to eat maggot-infested meat and mutiny against their commanding officers. One of the most memorable scenes of the film – the much-imitated (and parodied) Odessa steps sequence – is perhaps the most recognizable moment in world cinema.

The eponymous song from the film has become almost more popular than the film itself, and is one of the most frequently performed in Russia today. The picture was born from one scene created by the screenwriter: a girl walks through the beautiful Moscow rain, while a guy rides a bicycle alongside.

The main themes are the “Khrushchev thaw” and the construction of high buildings and even higher hopes. It was also the acting debut of future Oscar-winning director Nikita Mikhalkov.