Five Must-Watch Films to Check Out Before Summer Ends
By Aurora Malave, CSEEES Summer 2025 Intern
Interested in expanding your cinema palate? Here at CSEEES, we love to immerse ourselves in media across the globe. We collected some of our all-time favorite movies for you to watch before classes start later this month. Check out the films for a captivating watch.
Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Dir. Dziga Vertov
A man travels around the cities of Kyiv, Odesa and Moscow with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling invention.
"I saw this for the first time in a Soviet avant-garde class I took as an undergrad. I’ve always loved the innovative camera and montage work that went into it—especially since it was made in the 1920s! I was lucky enough to see it again a few years ago when it was screened at the Gateway. It’s a silent film, but during that showing the chamber music group Montopolis played an original score alongside the film. It was like I was seeing it for the first time again!" - Alicia Baca (CSEEES Outreach Coordinator)
In the Fog (2012)
Dir. Sergei Loznitsa
Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.
"I’ve had the opportunity to attend several film screenings of Sergei Loznitsa’s films, including with him in attendance, and I find him to be a fascinating phenomenon—not uncontroversial, but with his documentarian’s eye he shows us sides of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that we might otherwise miss.
For a summer audience, the fiction films are a better fit. My favorite is In the Fog (2012), based on a Vasil’ Bykau story about World War II." - Angela Brintlinger (CSEEES Director)
Aurora’s Sunrise (2022)
Dir. Inna Sahakyan
Featuring interviews with Aurora Mardiganian, storybook-style animation, and rare footage from Auction of Souls, this mostly animated documentary tells a powerful story of tragedy, survival, hope, and resilience.
"Aurora’s Sunrise is one of the most interesting movies I have ever watched. The film tells the story of Aurora Mardiganian’s survival through the Armenian genocide. It combines interviews with Aurora from the 1980s and footage of the autobiographical film she starred in in 1919 called Auction of Souls, and replaces missing footage and fills the gaps with some of the most beautiful animation I have seen.
This style is like no movie I had watched before. Though the topic is grim, the mixed format and use of animation allows the viewer distance from the worst atrocities, and, as the title suggests, it ends with hope. I recommend it for both entertainment and informational purposes." - Emma Pratt (CSEEES Assistant Director)
EO (2022)
Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski
This film follows a donkey who encounters good and bad people, experiences joy and pain, exploring a vision of modern Europe through his eyes.
"A couple years ago, one of the Polish films we showed on campus was EO, about a donkey that escapes from a circus. It was, however, from the donkey’s point of view and was darker and, I thought, sadder, than Big Animal. Still, it won a bunch of awards and was worth watching." - Maryann Walther-Keisel (CSEEES Office Coordinator)
Mermaid (1996)
Dir. Aleksandr Petrov
An elderly monk, while training the young novice who will succeed him, recalls the mysterious lost love of his past - just as his young successor appears to be encountering her himself.
"Probably the loveliest animated short (10 minutes) I have ever seen, a story of love, sin, and redemption. The paint-on-glass technique creates a haunting atmosphere perfectly matched to the supernatural theme. I think there is a subtitled version available, but there is no need, since the dialogic is purely atmospheric." - Daniel Collins (Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures)
