Loveless (Нелюбовь) (2017)

'Loveless' doesn't even begin to describe the war zone that is the home of supervillains Boris and Zhenya's broken marriage, and the collateral damage in this conflict is their poor twelve-year-old son, Alyosha, whose silent scream behind a door as his parents fight over who gets lumped with him post-conflict is an image that will haunt you forever, or until your phone beeps and furry kitten pics take you to some more self-serving place.

★★★★★

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The Return (Возвращение, Vozvrashcheniye) (2003)

Two young brothers have their mother's word and a 12-year-old photo to assure them that the man who has turned up home is their father, and no sooner has he sat down at the kitchen table and plied them with wine, the threesome head off on a tense car trip to fish, camp, learn how to make bowls from birch, and presumably, they are to bond provided the boys can conform to their new taskmaster's authoritarian approach to parenting...or could this mystery man have other plans and might the group in fact end up killing each other (you won't ever really believe)...but who would know given the trio's frustrating inability to simply communicate and square with each other?

★★★☆☆

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Elena (Елена) (2011)

In this unhurried but captivating Russian melodrama with something biting to say about privilege, responsibility and enabling, second wife and carer, Elena, launches into action when her ailing husband announces his intention to leave a bulk of his estate to his wayward daughter, not to Elena and so not to Elena's son's desperate family.

★★★★☆

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Leviathan (Левиафан) (2014)

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan is a sprawling drama about a mechanic, his second wife, his son and his lawyer, about life and corruption and church and state, God, pigs eating slop, whales, tragedy, and a leviathanic study of modern-day Russia delivered with the weight and breadth of a Dostoyevsky novel.

★★★★★

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