Pavel Lungin Movies

The grim rule of Ivan the Terrible and his stranglehold over religion and politics sets the stage for this historical drama from director Pavel Lungin. In the mid-16th century, Ivan IV (Pyotr Mamonov) is the Tsar of Russia, and rules the nation with an iron fist; obsessed with order and keeping his enemies down, Ivan and his equally despotic wife Maria Temryukovna (Ramilya Iskander) have a elite team of secret police at their disposal known as "The Tsar's Dogs," but Ivan also believes the last days are near and that God will judge him harshly. When the leader of the Russian Orthodox church leaves his post in disgust with Ivan's policies, he calls on Filipp (Oleg Yankovsky), a priest and close confidant, to take over the position; Filipp agrees, but it soon becomes clear that Ivan expects Filipp's first loyalty to be to with him rather than the church or his parishioners, and as Ivan's leadership becomes more extreme and his behavior unstable, Filipp must rethink his allegiances even if it means risking his life. Tsar received its world premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Political intrigue and total corruption within the so-called democratic Russia are brought to the forefront in Pavel Lungin's Tycoon. Beginning as an investigation into the assassination of one of the richest men in Russia, the story flashes back to late-'80s Russia, just after Perestroika has broken up the Soviet Union. Five intelligent Russian students -- including one Platon Makovski (Vladimir Mashkov) -- abandon their academic careers in exchange for diving into the newly developing private business sector. As the rules for business in Russia are barely in place, the five new businessmen find a number of ways to profit from a wide array of nearly illegal dealings. Platon, in particular, has developed a knack for ingenious new ways of making money and very quickly becomes one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Russia. Along the way, he also manages to alienate and/or infuriate most of his friends as well as a few government officials. Tycoon premiered to positive reviews at the 2002 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, Rovi

This fast-paced, convoluted bit of European escapist fare is set in crumbling contemporary Moscow, where a French composer finds himself seduced into a fantastic adventure after his flight to Paris is delayed and he finds himself broke and stranded in the Moscow airport. His temptress is the mischievous Oksana, who convinces him to sneak out of the airport to sample the Moscow nightlife. He doesn't realize that she is actually the daughter of Papa, a powerful local Mafia don. Papa looks weak and helpless, but he is anything but and secretly drugs the composer Phillipe's drink and then kidnaps him. When Phillipe awakens, Papa forces him to impersonate the commercial director of a huge French textile mill so the Mafioso can continue to con the leader of a recently liberated Central Asian country into investing in a non-existent mill. The plot works until the bilked gets his own revenge. Meanwhile, Phillipe and Oksana fall in love even though they realize that one of them must be sacrificed to save face. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Andrei is buff, he is muscular, he is ready to bash heads whenever and wherever his much-worshipped mother directs, and his gang is similarly buff, similarly ready to follow the lead of Andre's mother. He has lived a life of competition and conflict with true Russian heroes like his father, who he believed died in Afghanistan, and enemies like Jews and foreigners. For him, after his lounge-singing mother, the muscular movie-star Arnold Schwarzenegger is a god. His mother is a piece of work, using her incestuous relationship with her son to motivate him to go off on rampages to satisfy her bile against all "non-Russians." One day she gets drunk and reveals that Andrei's father is not the soldier he always thought he was, but a Jewish composer and conductor. Thinking she has fashioned her son into the perfect instrument for revenge, she tells him how his father seduced her (making her pregnant) and then did not cast her as a singer for an important role, which blighted her career after that. When Andrei looks up his newly revealed father, he finds an impoverished, gentle man who lives in such chaos that a few new holes in the wall, put there in an anti-Semitic rage by the boy, have no effect on him. Instead, he is proud of his newfound son. Before long, the charms of gentleness and civility have won him over, and he realizes that he must protect his father against his mother and his former gang, still loyal to her wishes. In a film-making note, industry insiders said that many of the skinheads in the gangs in this movie were the genuine article, which lent a specially chilling realism to their anti-everybody performances. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi