Onegin

Onegin (2024) is Sarik Andreasyan's lavish Russian costume drama based on Pushkin's novel in verse, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The Petersburg dandy Yevgeny Onegin is worn out by balls, salons and theater premieres.

When word arrives that his wealthy uncle is dying, Onegin feels mostly relief — a reason to flee the high society he has grown sick of. The countryside brings him an inheritance and an unfamiliar quiet. Neighbors soon write the city visitor off as an oddball, and his only real company becomes the young, starry-eyed landowner Vladimir Lensky. Lensky introduces him to the Larin sisters — flirtatious Olga and the pensive Tatyana, who falls for the jaded hero at exactly the wrong moment.

Viktor Dobronravov plays Onegin as a tired, middle-aged man, Liza Moryak is Tatyana, and Vladimir Vdovichenkov narrates in prose where the original verse has been set aside. Andreasyan films the school-syllabus classic with deliberate beauty: manor houses, ballrooms and a Russian winter in wide shots across 141 unhurried minutes. It is a divisive but sincere attempt to retell Russia's most famous novel in plain cinematic language — worth measuring against the Pushkin you remember. Stream Onegin (2024) online on iFILM.