Cloister (Season 1)

Cloister (2021) is a historical drama you can watch online on iFILM, adapted by director Alexander Veledinsky from Zakhar Prilepin's acclaimed novel. The setting is Solovki in the late 1920s — an ancient northern monastery turned into a prison camp.

Artyom Goryainov, a young Muscovite jailed over a senseless killing, is shipped to the islands in the White Sea. The camp runs on hunger, frost, informers and casual executions, with only flickers of mercy in between. There Artyom catches the eye of Galina, a Cheka officer who also happens to be the common-law wife of Fyodor Eichmanis, the camp's almighty commandant. Their affair ignites in a place where a single wrong glance can get you shot.

Across twelve episodes Veledinsky stays close to one man scraping the bottom and trying to work out what's still alive inside him, instead of lecturing about the camps at large. Yevgeny Tkachuk, Sergei Bezrukov and Aleksandra Rebenok play it so rawly that it's hard to look away. Slow, heavy, honest. Stream Cloister (2021) online on iFILM.