Ten films set in Russia

With Russia back in the news yet again, it’s interesting to note how comparatively few English language movies set in the country there actually are.

Admittedly in TV there’s been an uptick, with two recent series on Catherine The Great in youth/middle age, the Andrew Davies Pass Notes version of War & Peace, McMafia and the multi award-winning Chernobyl.

But in terms of film, there are a handful of classics and older movies such as Dr Zhivago (1965), War & Peace (umpteen adaptations) the musical Fiddler On The Roof (1971), and two comedies – Mel Brooks’ The Twelve Chairs (1970) and of course Woody Allen’s Love & Death (1975), but the subject matter for many others is often confined to WWII, the Cold War and other (surprise surprise) spy-related themes.

Don’t get me started on submarine actioners with a Russian angle; movies such as The Hunt for Red October (1990), Crimson Tide (1995) and no less than three more recent titles (K19: The Widowmaker, Kursk and Hunter Killer) that all tend to follow the familiar undersea tropes. Dodgy