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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