'Storm over Asia' ('The Heir to Genghis Khan') was the third of Vsevolod Pudovkin's great silent films. Released in 1928 it confirmed the director's reputation and Soviet cinema's growing stature internationally. It was subsequently re-edited, sonorised and re-released in 1949.
The Buriat-Mongolian actor Valeri Inkizhinov stars as the trapper hero, Bair, a character partly inspired by the actual Revolutionary figure, Sukhebator. Many of the extras in the film had participated in the events depicted. The film acknowledges a debt to D.W. Griffith and documents the everyday life and rituals...

The first indisputable masterpiece of post-Stalin cinema, The Cranes Are Flying, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov tells a story of love, betrayal, and renewal against the background of World War II. Josephine Woll's beautifully written account of this film reviews its presentation of war, its redefinition of Soviet ideas of heroism, its enigmatic central protagonist, Veronika and her paradoxical decision to marry one man while never ceasing to love another. Woll also details its reception in the Soviet Union and the West, where it was widely distributed and acclaimed.