An Unfinished Piece for Player PianoMovies like An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano
- Key Features:
- Late 19th century, Russian history, Social commentary, Class conflict, Aristocracy, Existentialism, Rural setting, Ennui, Melancholy, Period piece
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Film festival enthusiasts, Arthouse cinema lovers, Fans of period dramas, Viewers interested in Russian literature
- Emotional Arc:
- Introspection → Melancholy
An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano

On a summer day in late 19th century Russia, a group of bourgeois friends and acquaintances gather at a dilapidated country estate.
An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano
A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.

Lacking inspiration, a composer isolates himself at a desolate house, on a small island, in Brittany. There he finds an old piano and receives visits from people who won't let him rest.

Every person you meet is fighting a battle you don't know anything about. Lena comes to the countryside to collect and take things out of the house she has sold. neighbor igor interferes with her plans. he sits in a tree around the clock and screams driving lena crazy.

While vacationing in the countryside at his childhood home, a woman suddenly reveals to her husband that she is expecting a child – but not his.

In the end of 1809, Natasha attends her first ball. Andrei falls in love with her and intends to marry her, but her father demands they wait. The prince travels abroad, and Natasha desperately longs for him. But she then meets Anatol Kuragin and forgets of Andrei. At the last minute, she regrets and abandons her plans to elope with Anatol. Bolkonsky hears of this and declares their betrothal is over. Pierre, trying to calm her down, suddenly announces he loves her.

Adequacy is relative. Vitalik the main character of the movie seems to be pretty normal. With a respectable office job, a comfy little dwelling and a personal couch doctor, Vitalik looks as adequate as a human can possibly be. Wait till he drinks and drives himself into depression, and after that falls in love with an under-age girl living next door. Who's adequate now?

Three characters living in an unfinished painting venture out into the real world in search of their creator to convince him to finish his work.

Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.

In the town of Bryakhimov, noble but poor widow Harita Ignatyevna Ogudalova seeks to arrange marriages for her three daughters. She maintains an “open house”, hoping to attract gentlemen well-off enough to marry a dowry-less girl for love.

Seven year old Sasha practices violin every day to satisfy the ambition of his parents. Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their upscale Moscow neighborhood.

Grigory, born into an oligarch family, is so spoiled that he believes he's above the law. When he faces jail, his father decides to 'rehabilitate' his son. An abandoned village is reconstructed, 19th century style. Grigory 'goes back in time', reincarnated as a serf, to learn how to appreciate life and to work hard.

Five passengers - the Bandit, his friend Matvei, Matvei's old father, the Musician, and a young woman - race along an empty road in a big black jeep, searching for the Belfry of Happiness which, according to hearsay, lies somewhere between St. Petersburg and the town of Uglich, near a deserted nuclear power station. The Belfry takes people, but it does not take everyone. Each of the five passengers believes that he or she will be chosen.

An aging, decadent landlord’s passion for music becomes the undoing of his legacy as he sacrifices his wealth in order to compete with the opulent music room of his younger, richer neighbour.

Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.

1829: Nikolay Gogol, troubled Third Section clerk, burns his own books. Epileptic seizures plague him. Investigator Yakov Guro discovers Gogol's visions hold crime-solving clues. Together, they tackle a baffling case in Dikanka, where everyone hides a dark secret.

During World War II, earnest young Russian soldier Alyosha Skvortsov is rewarded with a short leave of absence for performing a heroic deed on the battlefield. Feeling homesick, he decides to visit his mother. Due to his kindhearted nature, however, Alyosha is repeatedly sidetracked by his efforts to help those he encounters, including a lovely girl named Shura. In his tour of a country devastated by war, he struggles to keep hope alive.

Antonina Milyukova is a beautiful and bright young woman, born in the aristocracy of 19th century Russia. She could have anything she'd want, and yet her only obsession is to marry Pyotr Tchaikovsky, with whom she falls in love from the very moment she hears his music. The composer finally accepts this union, but after blaming her for his misfortunes and breakdowns, his attempts to get rid of his wife are brutal. Consumed by her feelings for him, Antonina decides to endure and do whatever it takes to stay with him. Humiliated, disgraced and discarded, she is slowly driven to madness.

Antoine is a musician. The forties, he suddenly decides to end his career. After a few days of wandering, he gets a job as a janitor. Mathilde lives in the old building in the east of Paris where he takes office. This is a young retiree, generous and involved, who divides his time between his associational activities and the life of the condominium. One night, she discovers a disturbing crack on the wall of his living room. Gradually, his anxiety grew to turn into panic and if the building collapsed ... Slowly, Antoine befriends the woman he feared to see slip into madness. Between slips and concerns, both form an awkward tandem, humorous and solidarity which will, perhaps, through this bad patch.

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.

After suffering from a heart attack, a wealthy elderly Russian man plans to will most of his estate to his estranged daughter, but his titular wife has other plans.

A woman lives in a small village in Russia. One day she receives the parcel she sent to her husband, serving a sentence in prison. Confused and angered, she sets out to find why her package was returned to sender.

A young writer brings a collection of short stories to a big Moscow publishing house. The manuscript stays at the office and mysteriously influences the lives of anyone who opens it and reads at least one page. There are four stories in the manuscript, and four readers whose lives are changed after reading them. The situations range from realistic to absurd to thrilling to create a rich portrait of life in contemporary Russia and showcase the thoughts, feelings and ambitions of people who live there.

A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.

While returning to Leningrad from a visit to his brother, Professor Artyom's car breaks down and he finds assistance at an isolated farmhouse occupied by Alexey, his wife, a Vietnamese laborer, and a stranger who wanders around the farm. When his car is repaired, Artyom leaves, drunk on moonshine, and students Valera and Angelika arrive. After Valera gets drunk, the stranger abducts Angelika.

In this hit Russian musical, a group of friends flaunts Soviet authority in 1950s Moscow by embracing jazz. When Communist Mels falls for Polly, a free-spirited jazz fan, he risks losing his party membership by associating with her rebellious crew.

An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

A hapless country doctor describes with breathless urgency a night-time summons to attend a young patient. Events soon take on a surreal aspect as "unearthly horses" transport him instantaneously to the bedside. The doctor, preoccupied with personal distractions and grievances against those he is employed to care for, fails to find what is revealed to be a vile, fatal wound. He is humiliated by the villagers, who are "always expecting the impossible from the doctor," and doomed to an endless return trip, losing everything.

Young Katya meets a merry company of visiting guys who have a specific entertainment - to organize parties in other people's empty houses. And Katya knows the right place: an old country house on the coast, the owner of which left for a long time. The secluded house, in which the spiritualist salon was at the beginning of the last century, seems to everyone an excellent option. Alarming, even the terrible abandonment of this place does not frighten anyone ... In the midst of the party, someone whom Katya never expected to see appears: the mysterious master of the house ... The man she loved. A man in the grip of otherworldly forces.

In nineteenth-century Łódź, Poland, three friends want to make a lot of money by building and investing in a textile factory. An exceptional portrait of rapid industrial expansion is shown through the eyes of one Polish town.

A painter facing a creative block arranges to spend the weekend in the country at his mistress's villa. While staying there, his sanity begins to disintegrate.

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

The first film of a four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 novel. In St. Petersburg of 1805, Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a rich nobleman, is introduced to high society. His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, joins the Imperial Russian Army as aide-de-camp of General Mikhail Kutuzov in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon.

It's a story of 29-year-old top-manager Max who is really sure he is absolutely successful. All his life is around earning and spending money. But one day he meet a girl who is from another, real, world. And his own world starts to crash down.

Indifferent to the notion of inheriting his father's estate, a restless, aging New Yorker passes time with his friends in games of mock sincerity, irreverence, and recreational cruelty towards those around them.

Following the Russian Civil War, a loyal Red, Shilov, must prove he is at home among strangers as he attempts to recapture a shipment of gold that he was supposed to deliver to Moscow. Needed as a means of buying food for the people, the gold Shilov was entrusted with is stolen, initially by a group of assassins and then by a group of bandits. In tracking the gold’s whereabouts, Shilov’s motives are questioned and he is suspected of treason, in part because his brother was a devoted White. In an effort to clear his name, Shilov locates the gold, but he also discovers rampant greed and corruption.

Amid the sweltering summer heat in northern Argentina, two middle-class families retreat to a crumbling country estate and a modest townhouse, where strained relationships, simmering tensions, and the presence of children and servants quietly expose the fractures of family life. Between idle days, gossip, and unspoken desires, the boundaries of class, tradition, and faith are reflected in their everyday interactions.

A seven-hour epic adaptation of the novel by Leo Tolstoy. The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

A monumental windstorm and an abused horse's refusal to work or eat signal the beginning of the end for a poor farmer and his daughter.

Stoic and heartbroken, Einar Gilkyson quietly lives in the rugged Wyoming ranchlands alongside his only trusted friend, Mitch Bradley. One day, the woman he blames for the death of his only son arrives at his door broke, desperate and with a granddaughter he's never known. But even as buried anger and accusations resurface, the way is opened for unexpected connection, adventure and forgiveness.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

An affluent, middle-aged couple's uneventful lives are forever changed when they move into an isolated house in the country and befriend an odd, younger couple.

On the eve of his 78th birthday, the ailing, alcoholic writer Clive Langham spends a painful and sleepless night mentally composing and recomposing scenes for a novel in which characters based on his own family are shaped by his fantasies and memories, alongside his caustic commentary on their behaviour.

Leningrad, one summer in the early eighties. Smuggling LPs by Lou Reed and David Bowie, the underground rock scene is boiling ahead of the Perestroika. Mike and his beautiful wife Natasha meet with young Viktor Tsoï. Together with friends, they will change the destiny of rock’n’roll in the Soviet Union.

In 1830s France, pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin is pursued romantically by the determined, individualistic woman who uses the name George Sand.

Eight Italian politicians from the communist party gather on a terrace in Rome for a get-together. They discuss about their past, present and future.

A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.

When a factory is bound to close, a group of workers decides to take action against the owner.

When the beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet is diagnosed with a life threatening illness, the group's future suddenly hangs in the balance as suppressed emotions, competing egos and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. As they are about to play their 25th anniversary concert — quite possibly their last — only their intimate bond and the power of music can preserve their legacy.

A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.

Since his beloved violin was broken, Nasser-Ali Khan, one of the most renowned musicians of his day, has lost all taste for life. Finding no instrument worthy of replacing it, he decides to confine himself to bed to await death.

Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.

Anna Karenina, the wife of a Russian imperial minister, creates a high-society scandal by an affair with Count Vronsky, a dashing cavalry officer in 19th-century St. Petersburg.

The year is 1917. We are in the Russian countryside. It is the middle of freezing winter. A pale young, newly educated doctor arrives. Having to deal with one medical challenge after another he soon becomes the center of everyone's attention. To soothe the impressions of human suffering he turns to morphine.

Louise meets Nathan, her dreams resurface. It's also the story of her ailing brother, their mother, and the destiny of a leading family of wealthy Italian industrialists. The story of a family falling apart, a world coming to an end and love beginning.

As she does every morning, Lucie takes advantage of her journey to work to lose herself for a while in the pages of a good book. And as she does every morning, she joins her colleagues at the office with a smile. It's a working day just like any other. Then suddenly all activity in the office stops. All attention is turned towards the window of the opposite building opposite and abanner reading: Man Alone. Is it a hoax? A cry for help? Everyone has his own interpretation, and will try, by any means possible, to discover what lies behind this mysterious message.

Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice in a small seaside resort in Western France. He is a famous actor, about to turn fifty. She is a piano teacher in her forties. They were in love fifteen years ago, then separated. Time has passed. They each went their ways and slowly healed. When Mathieu goes try to overcome his melancholia in a thermal spa, he stumbles upon Alice.

Shuhei Amamiya transfers to Moriwaki Elementary filled with hope and ambition. But it doesn't take long before he gets picked on by the class bullies, and gets involved in a dare to play the mysterious piano in the forest. Igniting his meeting with an equally enigmatic child, Kai Ichinose, who seems to be the only one capable getting sound out of the thought to be broken piano.

1945, Leningrad. World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Two young women, Iya and Masha, search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.

General Ivolgin, forester Kuzmich, and good-natured Lyova lose their way on a fishing trip and wind up in a neighboring country, where they decide to have a good time anyway but end up leaving their vodka and fishing equipment behind.

Peasant girl Jagna is forced to marry the much older, wealthy farmer Boryna, despite her love for his son Antek. With time, Jagna becomes the object of envy and disdain with the villagers and she must fight to preserve her independence.

Failed musician Jay abandoned his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon, a woman comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day, Jay follows her and learns about her. This eventually disrupts their relationship.

Today is Lara’s 60th birthday, which happens to fall on the same day as her pianist son’s career-defining concert. A failed pianist herself, Lara spends the time before his performance pacing about Berlin—boiling with jealousy, nerves, and pride—trying to get hold of her elusive son.

The story of the journey of an adult hero to his Bata, a stern Russian peasant who became a father at the dawn of the nineties and raised his son the way all Soviet people did.

A retired professor of American origin lives a solitary life in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. He is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her lover, her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, and forced to rent to them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. From this point on his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants' machinations, and everybody's life takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

During a brief summer vacation, a lonely woman recalls her first love thirteen years earlier.

A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust…

A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

Arima Kousei won numerous piano competitions while under the strict watch of his mother. He was known as the human metronome during that time. Since the death of his mother, Kousei has been unable to hear the sound of his piano. He then meets Miyazono Kaori through childhood friend Sawabe Tsubaki. Kaori plays the violin and has a free sprit. Since meeting her, Kousei is able to face the piano again. Meanwhile, Kaori holds a secret.

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

A thief named Egor, having served a term in prison, goes to the country to meet his pen-friend Lyuba, a kind genial village woman. Egor comes to love Lyuba sincerely. Now he has friends, work and a beloved woman, he decides to break with his criminal past and start a new life. However, his former criminal associates interfere brutally.

In 1812, Napoleon's Army invades Russia. Kutuzov asks Bolkonsky to join him as a staff officer, yet the prince requests a command in the field. Pierre sets out to watch the upcoming confrontation between the armies. During the Battle of Borodino, he volunteers to assist in an artillery battery. Bolkonsky's unit waits in the reserve, but he is hit by a shell. Both Anatol and Bolkosnky suffer severe wounds. The French Army is victorious and advances on Moscow.

Early autumn, godforsaken Russian countryside. A local hunter Michail witnesses a skirmish in the middle of the forest - three men want to kill the forth, Andrey. Kind-hearted Michail helps Andrey escape and together they run from the villains who chase them. Thus, two totally different men start a long and dangerous journey together, constantly arguing with each other regarding their ideology, morals and opinions about life. But life will put everything on its place and make the men understand who they really are.

A farmer and his wife live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia with their three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.

After connecting with the shy Madeline, a jazz trumpeter embarks on a quest for a more gregarious paramour, but through a series of twists and turns punctuated by an original score, the two lovers seem destined to be together.

After long absence, a man returns to his hometown only to find his best friend has become an alcoholic.

Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.

Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife, only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away.

An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.

Andrey Pavlovich Buzykin, who makes a living by teaching at an institute and translating English literature, is cheating on his wife. Buzykin's main problem is that he's a kind man with a weak character. The lies he is telling his wife all the time are inconvincing, but he never has the courage to tell her the truth. His lover, Alla, is aware of his family life, but gets offended when, for example, he cannot meet her so that he doesn't come home late, or when he doesn't want to go home in a new jacket she gives him to avoid having to explain to his wife. Alla and Nina, Andrei's wife, both leave him, forgive him, and return to him at the same time, and Andrei continues with this kind of life, full of suffering and deceit. Finally, both women are so fed up with his lies that they don't believe him even when he is telling the truth...

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.

An aircraft designer becomes a ghost after a sudden death. Now he needs to engage a help of seven-grader in order to finish all his unaccomplished tasks.

November 1999. 67-year-old Trond lives in new-found solitude and looks forward to spending New Year's Eve 2000 alone. As winter arrives he discovers he has a neighbor, a man Trond knew back in 1948, the summer he turned 15 and the summer Trond's father prepared him to carry the burden of his forthcoming betrayal and disappearance.

Vera is a troubled teenager fresh out of school feeling trapped in her provincial port town during the turbulent times of perestroika. Her days and nights are filled with drinking, sex, and family dysfunction.

Gauche is a diligent but mediocre cellist who plays for a small town orchestra and the local cinema in the early 20th century. He struggles during rehearsals and is often berated by his conductor during preparations for an upcoming performance of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Over the course of four nights, Gauche is visited at his mill house home by talking animals as he is practicing.

An automotive highway is scheduled to be built through the territory of a garage cooperative. A special meeting of the cooperative takes place to reduce the number of garages. As all was already decided and arranged by the chairholder and the board, the decision passes easily at the meeting. But one unexpected event happens - the meeting room's entrance has been locked by an anonymous member and the key is missing...

Story of the lives of three Soviet pilots who are united by disaster in a small town in the mountains.

In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000.

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.

After her mother's death, six-year-old Frida is sent to her uncle's family to live with them in the countryside. But Frida finds it hard to forget her mother and adapt to her new life.

In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, gifted but volatile folk musician Llewyn Davis struggles with money, relationships, and his uncertain future.

Antoine has agreed to follow a writing workshop where some young people in insertion must write a noir novel with the help of Olivia, a recognized novelist. The work of writing will bring to life the working-class past of the city. Its shipyard is closed for 25 years, a nostalgia that does not interest Antoine, influenced by the anxiety of the present world

Eight short films explore the subject of male infidelity. Serial cheaters, Fred and Greg, spend a night on the town doing what they do best, and with absolutely no regrets. The duo play various characters in assorted extracurricular situations, ranging from sexist to the darker sides of carnal desires.


