You won’t find “Eastern Europe†on a map. No lines of longitude or borders define it, and history before 1918 makes no distinction between “East†and “West.†The exonym “Eastern Europe†describes a collection of disparate nations that share little beyond some period of state socialism between 1945–90. But if you’ve ever wanted to get a closer look at what their cinema has to offer, there is a streaming service for you.
Eastern European Movies (dot-com), alongside its equally straightforwardly named sister sites Soviet & Russian Movies Online and Asian Movies Online, takes a regional approach to its curation. While respectable services like Criterion Channel or Mubi house internationally acclaimed films, they tend to feature titles admired for universal appeal and artistry, rather than local gems. By contrast, Eastern European Movies is definitely less polished: We don’t know who owns or funds it, they favor Bitcoin transactions, and they may or may not be based out of a tax haven (more on this later). So the whole operation feels a little suspect, despite functioning perfectly.
Many of its films are part of the global-cinema canon. And scattered among them are national classics or rare treasures that should be watched within their historical and national context. The library shows us what cinema behind the Iron Curtain looked like in the 20th century and what came after. There are ten countries included in “Eastern Europe†on the site: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia. If you want to experience each of their respective film outputs — and also prefer a lower-touch subscription than most streaming services — Eastern European Movies can help you lift the veil.
A Solid Selection — Depending on the Country
The collection, which numbers in the low hundreds, is impressive and well-curated with internationally acclaimed local classics. The offerings from each country can vary dramatically, partly depending on how robust its national film industry has been over the years.
Czechoslovakia, for example, had a strong cinema tradition before and during the Communist era, and its section is proportionally well stocked with 69 films. Mubi picks like Once Upon a Time, There Was a King are available — but there are also deeper cuts from the Czech New Wave such as the surrealist Birds, Orphans and Fools, by Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko, about three people orphaned by political violence who adopt a deranged childlike philosophy. (The movie was released in 1969 and banned by
Communist authorities until 1989.) On a lighter note, up until recently, it had When the Cat Comes — a whimsical movie about a magical bespectacled cat that comes to a small village and turns the people Technicolor. Eastern European Movies remains the only public platform where I’ve been able to find either film, and I hope the latter returns again.
The German section, on the other hand, lists just 36 films. Most are East German, like 1953’s The Story of Little Muck, the most commercially successful film of the DDR. From West Germany, there’s Das Boot, both the entire 1985 mini-series and the 1981 film directed by West German director Wolfgang Petersen. But many of Germany’s most acclaimed films, which were primarily produced in West Germany, are missing. Nor will you find any critically acclaimed German films made since reunification, like Run Lola Run (1998), The Lives of Others (2006), or The White Ribbon (2009).
Some countries have hardly any representation at all. Ukraine has 18 movies, while Estonia has two and Lithuania just one. There is, separately, a very goofy erotica subsection that seems to protest too much — taking pains to assure viewers that it is in fact stocked with “full-fledged films.â€
Built for Film Nerds, With Easy Sign-Ups
The site is designed with clean, aesthetically pleasing lines, pastel colors, and a wink to retro cinema: The landing page features a black-and-white photograph of a woman holding a multi-lens 16-mm. movie camera (a 1957 Austrian model called the Eumig C16R, to be exact) in front of her head, while text animation highlights the site’s subtitle languages. There is no mobile or tablet app, but the website works on iOS and Android browsers as well as on laptops. The films, uploaded in their entirety and without ads, run on embedded Vimeo links and stream smoothly. Drop-down menus allow viewers to browse by country, subtitle language, genre, and decade from the 1930s to the 2020s. There is a search bar, plus an advanced search that allows visitors to plug in actors, directors, and specific years. You can also add movies to a “favorites†queue.
The options for subtitles are enormous, with 32 languages listed, but not every language has many movies available. Afrikaans, for example, has just one movie option (the wonderful 2013 Polish drama Ida). From what I could tell, every movie at least has English subtitles and usually one or two more, often French or Russian. Many are listed with five or more supported languages.
But what stands out most about the site, apart from its content, is the subscription model. Instead of traditional monthly plans, it offers one-time payment options for limited-time access. Membership plans include a one-day pass at 5 Euros (~$5.38), one week for 15 Euros ($16.13), one month for 30 Euros ($32.26) and unlimited access at 100 Euros ($107.54), which includes the ability to download the films permanently. You can also buy gift cards for friends or family, and you can use your credit card or PayPal to pay — or opt for a 10 percent discount if you pay with Bitcoin.
It’s a refreshing departure from the usual streaming model, which might turn your flagging interest into a sustained bank-account drain. I pay roughly the same amount as a yearly subscription fee but in a one-time unlimited-binge payment. Others might want to enjoy just one day or a week exploring Eastern Europe’s cinema. For me, it’s nice to know that I don’t have to worry about another charge I might forget about.
A Mysterious Background
Here’s the big caveat: If you’re worried a website called EasternEuropeanMoviesDotCom might be a thinly disguised ploy to steal your identity, the lack of transparency or customer service will do little to assuage that fear. There is no public information on who runs or founded it, where they are located, when they launched it, or what their motivations were in creating it. Several emails to their “Contact Us†page went unanswered, as well as direct messages on Facebook and Instagram and to the Gmail listed on their Facebook page, [email protected]. According to ICANN, the non-governmental body designated with coordinating namespaces on the internet, the website was registered in November 2017. Its Facebook and Twitter pages were created in January 2018, and its Facebook page manager is apparently located in Andorra, a microstate and tax haven located between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountain range. That’s about all we know.
For those wondering if the streaming operation is entirely legal, the site assures you that Eastern European Movies is “an online service provider as defined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,†which allows copyright holders to self-publish by uploading their media to their services and the owners “do not monitor, screen or otherwise review the media which is uploaded.†This seems like a legal disclaimer more than an actual description of the service, since there is no option that I could find to upload content, and what is on the site appears carefully curated.
So, could you be sending your money to a North Macedonian teen hacker? It seems at least possible. But since you can pay for your membership with PayPal or Bitcoin, it is unlikely that your identity will be stolen. Eastern European Movies at least has me convinced it was made by a true fan, but I’m not sure I would put my credit-card information into the site. So far, I’ve had zero major cases of identity theft and I’ve managed to watch more than a dozen films I couldn’t anywhere else. To get a little closer to this part of the world, using it is a risk I’m willing to take.