Yuliya Solntseva

The Soviet Union's first science fiction spectacle, directed by Yakov Protazanov for Mezhrabpom-Rus and adapted from Alexei Tolstoy's novel. In post-revolutionary Moscow, engineer Los builds a rocket and flies to Mars, where he falls for the planet's queen, Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva), and helps spark a Martian proletarian uprising. The film's lasting fame rests on its astonishing constructivist design — Alexandra Exter's geometric Martian costumes and sets look like nothing else in silent cinema — while its Earthbound scenes offer a wry portrait of life under the New Economic Policy. Released in the United States as Revolt of the Robots. A 1924 production, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Science Fiction · Drama · Fantasy · Silent

The final film of Alexander Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy," and his last silent film. Earth follows a Ukrainian village through the upheaval of collectivization: the arrival of the first tractor, the resistance of the kulak landowners, and the murder of the young communist Vasyl by a hostile neighbor. Dovzhenko was commissioned to make propaganda for Stalin's farm policy, but what he delivered is a lyrical, almost pantheistic meditation on birth, death, and the soil. The film is built from images, apples in the sun, a farmer's face against the sky, a body laid out in the orchard, that have been quoted by filmmakers for decades. It was banned by Soviet authorities nine days after release. At the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, a poll of critics named it one of the twelve greatest films ever made. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Drama · Silent