History Northerm Caucasus

The story of Hadji Murad, a 19th-century Chechen chieftain who led his warriors in a fight against the invading forces of the Russian Czar.

His son and mother in peril at the hands of his enemies, a banished Caucasian warrior is forced to make an alliance with the Russians.

Chechnya's struggle for independence, as seen through the eyes of three friends who grew up in the Chechen capital of Grozny.

Chechnya's struggle for independence from Russia is one of history's longest on-going conflicts. In the last decade alone, nearly 150,000 Chechen civilians have been killed in two wars with Russia; a catastrophe that is one of the most underreported humanitarian crises of our time. Mountain Men & Holy Wars examines the roots of this bloody and protracted war. Filmmaker Taran Davies sets out to trace the life and legacy of Imam Shamil, the legendary warrior who led Chechnya's first rebellion against Russia and who is today the muse of Chechnya's struggle for independence. Davies and his colleagues travel to the site of Shamil's defeat, meet a man who claims to have had a life transforming vision of the Imam, uncover signs of the deadly Chechen tradition of vendetta & drink tea with Shamil's great great granddaughter. But Davies' journey takes an extraordinary turn when he encounters Imam Shamil's most violent legacy; the contemporary Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. Basayev is Russia's most wanted terrorist & the man some believe is the reincarnation of Imam Shamil. Mountain Men and Holy Wars is the first film to explore the roots of Islamic radicalism and terror in Chechnya. We learn from the story of Imam Shamil that history is repeating itself in a conflict that neither the Russians, nor the West can ever win by force. We learn that Holy War in the Chechnya is far from over.

Tells the terrifying inside story of what really happened during the 57-hour Moscow theatre siege carried out by Chechen gunmen in October 2002.

Portrait of Nugayev, the Tchetchenian mafia leader and independence fighter.

Elder son lives family in the morning to join group of Chechen partisans in their patrol in mountains.

After falling in love with a photographer, a young man follows her to war and puts himself into the shoes of a war reporter.

The dreadful warfare in Chechnya, a neighbor of Georgia, provides a unique poignancy into Otar Iosseliani's intriguing, four-hour, made-for-television documentary on Georgia.

A searing examination of the unrelenting Chechen conflict, observed through the prisms of a Russian military boys academy, a war-torn town and a children's refugee camp.

Russian paratroopers company meets superior forces of Chechen separatists during raid in mountains and accept uphill battle with no chance to survive. Based on Battle for Height 776.

The story of a young Chechen and his Russian captor during their civil war.

In 19th century, the Russian government tries to resettle a Chechen village to Turkey, but the villagers are not keen on being evicted from their homeland.

A Russian platoon sweeps a village, avoiding two mishaps. At a remote check-post they play cards with bullets as stakes. A village girl pimps her deaf-mute sister for bullets. A shifty enemy sniper keeps strafing, causing a tragedy.

In a Chechen city recovering after the war, a man disappears. As daily life goes on, those in search are drawn into a world where encounters with diviners and legal advisors, with the torturers and the tortured, with secret prisons and mythical lakes all become commonplace. Consolation and help only come from neighbours and relatives or accidentally met strangers people who themselves live with the loss or who are ones that have returned from where no one returns. The neighbour waits for her son and sees him in dreams almost every night even though more than five years have passed since the son was kidnapped. She does not have her son alive and she does not have him dead. The gray-haired man without an ear and with a burned hand still cannot think of life outside the prison cell. The adult son plays with the cloth rope and is dependent on his mother and sisters for most of his daily needs. What is then to live in a city where grand mosques lie next to torture prisons, where official statements are less valid than those heard at divination sessions, where pronouncements of death are occasions of joy, where streets are full of the ghostly presences of the dead and the missing; where the laughter of pain, a prayer, and a dream are the only solace? Barzakh, - a land between the living and the dead?

Ivan is the grandson of a military fighter pilot. The film explores the years of Ivan's adolescence through the prism of a trauma he incurred during an incident in the war.

An elderly woman takes a train trip to visit her grandson at his army camp inside Chechnya.

A military drama based on true events - a battle on the First Chechen War during the winter of 1994-1995. A story covers attacking a local hospital where Russian military forces placed. The film is full of violence scenes.

In the midst of the Chechen War, a remote psychiatric institution is left without staff leaving the patients to fend for themselves. Based on a true story.

Two Russian soldiers, one battle-seasoned and the other barely into his boots and uniform, are taken prisoner by an anxious Islamic father from a remote village hoping to trade them for his captured son.

A French woman who works for a non-governmental organization forms a special relationship with a lost young boy in war-torn Chechnya in 1999.

During the bloody war in Chechnya, a British couple and two Russian soldiers are taken hostage by Chechen rebels. Two of the hostages are then released to bring the money for the British woman who is forced to wait for the ransom.

Twelve jurors must decide the fate of a Chechen adolescent charged with murdering his stepfather.

Dagestan aul, 1930s. Almost simultaneously, children should be born at two neighbors, Bashir and Kasum. Bashir already has three daughters and he swears to expel his wife if she gives birth to the fourth. Nurzhan, the mother of Khanum (Bashir's wife), wants to resort to the aid of the fortune-teller Aishat. She offers to change the babies in case Guriat gives birth to a girl. So it turns out: Khanum gives birth to a girl, and Guriat (wife of Kasum) to a boy. Aishat and Nurzhan are changing their children.