Delve into the wide world of Eastern European film with the Klassiki Podcast. Featuring interviews, roundtable discussions, recorded essays, and more, we take you beyond the headlines to explore the past, present, and future of this fascinating region.
Klassiki is a streaming platform with a difference. Dedicated to cinema from Eastern Europe, we offer subscribers an ever-evolving library of classic and contemporary titles, as well as highlighting recent releases and festival favourites – meaning we’re the only place to discover the best new voices in eastern European film. Subscribers get access to all this, as well as filmmaker interviews, video essays and introductions, programme notes, and much more. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
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Delve into the wide world of Eastern European film with the Klassiki Podcast. Featuring interviews, roundtable discussions, recorded essays, and more, we take you beyond the headlines to explore the past, present, and future of this fascinating region.
Klassiki is a streaming platform with a difference. Dedicated to cinema from Eastern Europe, we offer subscribers an ever-evolving library of classic and contemporary titles, as well as highlighting recent releases and festival favourites – meaning we’re the only place to discover the best new voices in eastern European film. Subscribers get access to all this, as well as filmmaker interviews, video essays and introductions, programme notes, and much more. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Rewriting history in Aleksandr Askoldov’s Commissar
The Klassiki Podcast
16 minutes
3 weeks ago
Rewriting history in Aleksandr Askoldov’s Commissar
We’ve reached the end of season 5! Thank you to everyone for listening along. We’ll be back in 2026, but for now, happy holidays and speak to you soon.
To close out the season, we’re returning to the ever-expanding archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal and an essay on one of the great lost talents of the Soviet studio system. Aleksandr Askoldov only completed one feature film in his career, 1967’s excoriating anti-war drama Commissar, before falling foul of the censors and disappearing into obscurity. But the film remains a landmark for its deconstruction of Soviet mythology and its treatment of the USSR’s Jewish population. Klassiki favourite, writer and researcher Alisa Goruleva explores how Askoldov ended up on the wrong side of the censors but the right side of history.
Read the original piece here and watch Commissar on Klassiki now.
Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online
Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
The Klassiki Podcast
Delve into the wide world of Eastern European film with the Klassiki Podcast. Featuring interviews, roundtable discussions, recorded essays, and more, we take you beyond the headlines to explore the past, present, and future of this fascinating region.
Klassiki is a streaming platform with a difference. Dedicated to cinema from Eastern Europe, we offer subscribers an ever-evolving library of classic and contemporary titles, as well as highlighting recent releases and festival favourites – meaning we’re the only place to discover the best new voices in eastern European film. Subscribers get access to all this, as well as filmmaker interviews, video essays and introductions, programme notes, and much more. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
