A festival of Russian films in Prague will include world premieres

Mystery of the Dragon Seal (Tajemství dračí pečeti) is in English, and eight of the films will have English subtitles, in addition to Czech. The films in the Flash Film Festival with English subtitles are The Lenin Factor (Lenin: Neodvratnost), Policeman from Rublevka: New Year’s Chaos (Policajt z Rublevky Novoroční mumraj), Sober Driver (Rychlá želva), Naughty Grandma (Babička do větru), Above the Sky (Nad nebem), Girls are Something Else (Holky jsou jiné), How I Became Russian (Jak jsem se stal rusem), and Odessa (Oděsa).

Action fans will be interested in Mystery of the Dragon Seal, featuring Rutger Hauer in one of his final roles, Charles Dance, Jackie Chan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The sequel to the 2014 film Forbidden Empire continues the adventure of a mapmaker’s supernatural journey to China.

The controversial historical drama The Lenin Factor looks at the Soviet leader’s time in Switzerland before he returns to Russia in 1917. The coming of age drama Above the Sky sees a woman falling in love at a resort, against the backdrop of an unsolved murder. Family secrets are revealed and forbidden love blooms in the 1970s during a cholera epidemic in Odessa.

Several films are comedies. Policeman from Rublevka: New Year’s Chaos has officers in a police station that is abut to be closed hatching a wild plot to keep it open. In Sober Driver, a young woman mistakes a driver for drunken people for a rich man. A Chinese man courts a Russian woman, but her father objects in How I Became Russian.

Secret identity is also a theme. Naughty Grandma finds a criminal hiding in a nursing home. Three young men dress up as women to hide from a criminal gang in Girls are Something Else.

At the festival opening, actor Rinal Mukhametov will lead a delegation presenting the world premiere of Nikita Argunov’s The Coma, about an architect who recovers from an accident to strange world where the normal rules of reality don’t apply.

The whole festival will close the European premiere of the sci-fi thriller The Blackout (Avanpost), where Eastern Europe becomes the last outpost of civilization as the rest of the world mysteriously collapses. Both the opening and closing are presented with Czech subtitles only.

“I am very pleased to be able to present films that are not yet widely distributed at the opening of the Russian Film Week in Prague. I would like to highlight the film TheComa, which boasts not only an original script but also unique effects. It is an honor for us to organize the world premiere so that the Czech viewers are among the first to appreciate this film,” festival producer Armen Ananikian said.

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