A slightly far-fetched movie about Russia’s mafia has launched this year’s London Film Festival. Canadian Director David Kronenberg’s ‘Eastern Promises’ is full of violence, blood and cruelty.

But other movies are taking a more balanced view of Russian life. Russian director, Andrey Zvyagintsev, is showcasing his second film ‘The Banishment’ in London. Four years ago he caused a sensation by winning the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival with his debut ‘The Return’.

“As I was born in Russia within the context of Russian culture – I took it all in. And I obviously do Russian movies – I make them Russian. I’m happy it finds response in other cultures,” Andrey Zvyagintsev notes.

‘The Lighthouse’ is another movie made by a Soviet-born director. A semi-autobiographical drama, it unfolds in the early 1990s against the backdrop of the Caucasus wars that plagued Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. As the scope of the conflict extends itself to one woman's small village, she is forced to drop everything, move to Moscow, and start from scratch.

Its director Maria Saakyan says feelings have no borders. She is Armenian but still feels part of a larger cultural heritage that once used to be called the Soviet Union.

“I still have this big country behind me – I hope that maybe my kids will have the same feeling – of a big international multicultural country. For me Georgia, Armenia, Russia have so many close things and I don’t want them to be split by borders,” Maria Saakyan says.

All the participants at the festival say they know nearly nothing about Russian cinema but they are all willing to learn.