The theatre company Gods and Monsters and directors Nastazja Domaradzka and Phil Willmott  have adapted the Polish story The Wawel Dragon: the story of a people fighting the legendary monster by the Wawel Castle – one of Poland’s foremost tourist attractions. The story goes thus: Princess Wanda inherits the throne over the Wawel kingdom from her…

Incinerating the line between performance and real life, Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors drives home that the right to express yourself, through art or even plain thought, is still behind an iron curtain in some – even European – countries. Within Soho Theatre’s flashing neon exterior, BFT shows – through the stories of Russian political…

‘What happens when you are declared an enemy of the state simply for making art? Where do you belong when your government suppresses your basic right to expression? And how do you survive in one of the most brutal prison systems in the world?  Our brand new production, Burning Doors, blends sensuous theatricality and vigorous…

“Laaaadies and gentlemen”,  a TV host’s animated voice says out of speakers in the semi-dark, “it’s time for migrants to show that theeeeey’ve got talent!”. In an instant, the host – a middle aged man with white beard and a tuxedo in the blue and yellow stripes of the Ukrainian flag – makes his way…

Self Portrait of a Dutiful Daughter, Ana Lungu’s 2015 debut-feature, follows – or rather studies – Cristiana, its title character, in her daily environment. Long, pensive sequences give the viewer a voyeuristic impression of a young woman’s life as she pursues her PhD, her amorous and familial relationships, and the acquisition of a dog. As…

There’s no shortage of documentaries about Balkan atrocities – it’s virtually a sub-genre on Youtube – but few have been as affectingly or coolly told as Ognjen Glavonić’s Depth Two, which deals with events during the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999, when – soon after – a truck containing 53 unidentified dead bodies was…

Polish theatre director Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Phaedra(s) is in London from the Odeon Theatre de l’Europe in Paris. An ambitious play, it’s made up of three very different versions of the Greek myth of Phaedra, wife of King Theseus, who’s seized by a passionate and fatal love for her stepson Hippolytus. Three and a half hours…

SERGEI LOZNITSA / 2015 / BELGIUM / 74′  In August 1991, hardline communists staged a coup in Moscow, hoping to overthrow Gorbachev’s liberal rule. Loznitsa ignores the main stage events on the streets of Moscow, to take a sidelong look at The Event in a city 400 miles from the centre of the storm. As in both…

Drahomíra Vihanová’s A Squandered Sunday, shown at the Barbican last week, was the UK premiere of a film made in 1969, but shown for the first time – for political reasons – only at  the Karlovy Vary Film Festival nearly 20 years later. Based on a true story, the film follows an ordinary Sunday in the…

‘In recent years Romanian films have won prizes and praise a-plenty: it’s time to explore what makes them so special! The Romanian Cultural Institute in London an the British Film Institute proudly announce the opening of ‘Revolution in Realism: The New Romanian Cinema’ – the biggest showcase of Romanian cinema ever to have taken place in Britain, and possibly beyond. Do not miss…