The course introduces two prominent Eastern European film industries. The Hungarian cinema associated mainly with Béla Tarr, one of the leading film artists in the last two decades, and the new Rumanian cinema that celebrates a renaissance starting with Cristi Puiu's Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) and Cristian Mungiu's 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (2007).

The course examines the shared thematic, aesthetic and ideological characteristics of current Hungarian and Rumanian cinema such as the coping with the trauma of Soviet occupation and the fall of Communism, as well as the dialectics of chaos and order and the apocalyptic and existential discourse they present.

The course concludes with a close analysis of recent trends in post-glasnost Russian cinema. While referring to the works of such acclaimed filmmakers as Aleksandr Sokurov, Aleksey Balabanov and Nikita Mikhalkov, it deals with issues of father figures, nostalgia and urban images in recent Russian films.