When communism collapsed in Russia, so did its culture. State funding dried up, the theatres emptied, the Bolshoi stagnated and the vast studios turning out propaganda films fell silent. Now, 16 years later, the arts are back, and a new generation of Russian film-makers is pioneering a fresh, personal genre of cinema and winning prizes around the world.

And from today British audiences can see some of the freshest and the best new films from Russia. A London-based Russian cultural foundation is presenting a week-long festival of Russian films at the Apollo West End in London. The programme will include at least eight films made in the past two years that have won prestigious awards in Russia and abroad and whose directors and actors have been acclaimed as leaders of the new wave.

“These are young films – fresh, contemporary, provocative and witty,” says Svetlana Adjoubei, the organiser of the festival. “They are signals of contemporary culture. At the same time they are very traditionally Russian. All are concerned with moral issues and focus on eternal questions such as love, loyalty and individual responsibility.”

A decade ago such films might have appealed only to a small, art-house audience. Now the appeal is much wider. The British have grown more used to subtitles, and today’s directors are determined to make lyrical, emotionally open films that deal with, and appeal to, people living in Russia now, avoiding the obscurity and often inaccessible symbolism of earlier directors such as Tarkovsky.

Stalin considered film the most important propaganda medium of all, and vast resources were thrown at studios to convey the right message. Today’s films are made on a much tighter budget and, pared down to the essentials, are the better for it. Those coming to London have won warm praise at festivals. Euphoria,directed by Ivan Vyrypayev and winner of the debut prize, the Small Golden Lion, last year at Venice, depicts a passionate affair between a young man and a married woman, living as recluses under the immense sky of the boundless steppes. Travelling with Pets, released this year, by Vera Storozheva and the winner of the top prize at the Moscow Film Festival, is about a Russian girl forced, at the age of 16, to marry a brutal man.

Other films in urban settings are full of black humour. Playing the Victim by Kirill Serebrennikov, a former theatre director, is a modern take on Hamlet. Named Best Film at Rome’s inaugural film festival, it deals with a skinny young man who hates his mother and her fancy suitor, his uncle, whom he suspects of murdering his father. The ghost of the dead man, of course, appears one night to him as he is playing sexual games with his girlfriend, the Ophelia character.

A penetrating, atmospheric drama by Pavel Lungin, The Island, deals with sin, repentance and monasticism and so impressed the Russian Orthodox Church that it has, unusually, been recommended from the pulpit.

Britain’s huge Russian community – around 100,000 in London alone – will turn out in force. The festival is not aimed at them but at British audiences and directors, and it hopes to form a link with The Times BFI London Film Festival – which will itself open with David Cronenberg’s portrayal of the Russian mafia in London, Eastern Promises.

Russia’s Ministry of Culture and the British Council are hoping to make the festival a yearly event – despite the present strained political relations. But as Adjoubei says, politics is nowhere in the festival: “Today’s films work with humans, whose aspirations and individual lives are at the centre of the narratives. That’s what makes them human and that’s what makes them universal.”

The Russian Film Festival, today to Wed, at Apollo West End, SW1 (0871 2206000, www.apollocinemas.co.uk)

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• Oscars

• Cannes

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette