Igor Kvasha Movies

Russian theatrical stage director Valery Fokin directs this film version of Franz Kafka's 1915 story of loneliness and isolation, The Metamorphosis. In the early 1900s, businessman Gregor Samsa (Evgeny Mronov) goes home to see his family in Prague. After his last supper as a human, Gregor retires to his room where he slowly turns into a giant insect through the course of several dream sequences. After his boss comes around to see what the trouble is, his family rejects him and he dies alone. The musical score is provided by Alexander Bakshy. Originally titled Prevrashchenie, Metamorphosis was shown at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival market. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, grandmother (Yelena Bogdanova) is mostly paralyzed, and is unable to speak. She is waited on by her daughter Nina (Inna Churikova), a twice-divorced woman in her fifties, who responds reflexively to the bell that summons her. The daughter has two daughters of her own: Lidia (Svetlana Ryabova) is in her twenties, Natashya (Masha Goloubkina), Nina's child by another husband, is in her mid-teens. The three younger women conduct their lives and their love affairs under the silent but watchful eye of the older woman in a small Moscow apartment. On one disastrous evening, Nina's newest boyfriend Evgeny meets her two former husbands, the older granddaughter's new boyfriend proves to be virtually spineless, and the youngest granddaughter announces her pregnancy just before her loutish young boyfriend Misha drunkenly crashes the party. After all the men leave and the agitation they brought with them dissipates, the three younger women are calmly discussing Natashya's options when they hear singing coming from grandmother's alcove. An accidental blow to the head has restored her faculties. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this picaresque comedy, a Georgian boy with a Jewish stepbrother gets involved in an emigration mixup. Things are rough in present-day U.S.S.R., and when Yasha (Gerard Darmon) decides to take advantage of an open emigration visa to Israel being offered by the Russian government, and though his father and family are at first upset at the prospect of losing him, they finally accept the good sense of his decision. While accompanying his brother to the airport, younger stepbrother Merab (also Gerard Darmon) briefly holds Yasha's papers while he goes into a store to buy some things for his trip. Somehow, Merab winds up on the airplane to Vienna, minus luggage or any money. He tries to straighten things out at the Russian embassy, but gets treated as an imposter. So he flies on to Israel, where he tries the same thing. There, they think he is a KGB agent who is testing them, and once again he is sent away. With no other options, he gets involved in some shady dealings in Israel. Meanwhile, his now-desperate family is attempting to persuade the Israeli government to return this, the "wrong" boy, and have kidnapped an American tourist as a hostage. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A small town is turned upside down when Mr. Fest (Andrei Mironov) arrives with a movie projector in this hilarious Georgian comedy western. In an homage to silent-era slapstick comedy, hard-drinking cowboys give up booze for milk when the saloon loses patrons to the picture show. The town bully joins the church choir along with a slew of sultry saloon sirens when they are drawn away from the evils of alcohol and moral depravity. Barroom brawls, Indian attacks, sight gags, and an all-star cast made this the second most popular Soviet film of 1988. Over 40 million people in the USSR paid to see the feature, the last for the popular Andei Mironov. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Based on a story by Anton Chekhov, this film by renowned director Sergei Bonderchuk (best known for his film War and Peace) basks in the vast and visually magnificent qualities of life on the steppes of southern Russia in the era before the Russian Revolution. The story revolves around the journey of a wagon train bearing materials from the countryside to the marketplace. Riding along with the wagon train in carriages are an Orthodox priest and a trader carrying his nephew into town to receive some schooling. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide