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MBK Productions is a London-based production company founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky as part of his media group. Khodorkovsky’s own story is one of struggling for freedom against tyranny. MBK Productions seeks to invest in films and develop stories that, in their own way and on whatever level, do the same.
MBK’s projects include Anastasia, Merkel, Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son, The Walk, Fisherman’s Friends: One and All, Cottontail, Typist Artist Pirate King, Firebrand, The Convert, The Outrun and One Life.
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The protagonist of ‘Anastasia’ Russian civil rights activist Anastasia Shevchenko has faced severe consequences for standing up to the regime. She endured house arrest for two years, and became the first person found guilty of ‘organising activity of an undesirable organisation” by a Russian court, for her work with the Open Russia movement. Amnesty International declared her a prisoner of conscience.
While Anastasia was under arrest, her teenage daughter Alina was hospitalised and died alone. The spiritual and emotional burden that Anastasia carries makes her determination even more remarkable, as she continues to raise her two other children. One morning she gathers them and her elderly mother and takes a train across Russia to the Black Sea. They come to terms with the family loss, and Anastasia realises the only way she can continue to fight is to leave Russia.
Illuminated by extensive archive material and interviews with those who know her, this is the astonishing story of how a triple outsider – a woman, a scientist, and an East German – became the de facto leader of the Free world.
Director: Eva Weber
Producers: Sigrid Dyekjær, Lizzie Gillett, Sonja Henrici and Eva Weber.
Produced by Real Lava and Passion Pictures in association with MBK Productions.
The growing friendship between two women as they hit the road in an electric car looking for endings and reconciliation.
Reality is just around the bend.
Director: Carol Morley
Cast: Monica Dolan, Kelly Macdonald and Gina McKee
Producers: Ameenah Ayub Allen and Cairo Cannon
Produced by Cannon and Morley Productions in association with MBK Productions
Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, needs her intelligence and wit to survive life in the Court of the suspicious King.
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan, Erin Doherty and Simon, Russell Beale
Producers: Gabrielle Tana and Carolyn Marks Blackwood
Produced by Brouhaha Entertainment and presented by MBK Productions
A small group of Russian soldiers have the task of taking Hitler’s discovered body back to Stalin in Moscow.
Director: Ben Parker
Cast: Tom Felton, Harriet Walter, Charlotte Vega and Barry Ward
Producers: Ignacio de Medina, Paul Higgins and Matthew James Wilkinson
Produced by Stigma Films and Allfilm in association with MBK Productions.
Following the unexpected success of the band’s debut album “No Hopers, Jokers and Rogues”, we rejoin them struggling with the pressures and temptations of fame, second album syndrome, and performing on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury.
Directors: Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft
Cast: James Purefoy, Joshua McGuire, Maggie Steed, Ramon Tikaram and David Hayman
Producer James Spring
Produced by Fred Films in association with MBK Productions
A widower from Japan travels with his estranged son to England in order to fulfil his late wife’s dying wish.
Director: Patrick Dickinson
Cast: Ciarán Hinds, Lily Franky, Koshi Uehara and Miki Maya
Producers: Gabrielle Tana, Hélène Théodoly and Carolyn Marks Blackwood
Produced by Magnolia Mae Films in association with Written Rock Films and presented by MBK Productions
A widower from Japan travels with his estranged son to England in order to fulfil his late wife’s dying wish.
Director: Patrick Dickinson
Cast: Ciarán Hinds, Lily Franky, Koshi Uehara and Miki Maya
Producers: Gabrielle Tana, Hélène Théodoly and Carolyn Marks Blackwood
Produced by Magnolia Mae Films in association with Written Rock Films and presented by MBK Productions
Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, needs her intelligence and wit to survive life in the Court of the suspicious King.
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan, Erin Doherty and Simon, Russell Beale
Producers: Gabrielle Tana and Carolyn Marks Blackwood
Produced by Brouhaha Entertainment and presented by MBK Productions
Tells the story of the modest British humanitarian, Nicholas Winton, who helped save hundreds of children from the Nazis on the eve of World War II.
Director: James Hawes
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce, Johnny Flynn and Romola Garai
Producers: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Joanna Laurie, Guy Heeley
Produced by See-Saw Films and presented by BBC Films and MBK Productions
A lay preacher arrives at a British settlement in 1830s New Zealand. His violent past is drawn into question and his faith put to the test, as he finds himself caught in the middle of a bloody war between Maori tribes
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Guy Pearce, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne, Antonio Te Maioha, Jacqueline McKenzie and Lawrence Makoare
Producers: Troy Lum, Andrew Mason, Te Kohe Tuhaka and Robin Scholes
Produced by Brouhaha Entertainment and Jump Film and Television and presented by MBK Productions
Rona, fresh out of rehab, returns to the wild Orkney Islands after more than a decade away. As she reconnects with the dramatic landscape where she grew up, memories of her childhood merge with the more recent challenging events that have set her on the path to recovery
Director: Nina Fingscheidt
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Stephen Dillane and Paapa Essiedu
Producers: Sarah Brocklehurst, Jack Lowden, Saoirse Ronan and Dominic Norris
Produced by Brock Media and Arcade Pictures and presented by BBC Films and MBK Productions
Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son tells the stories of people who have lived on the streets – those who have escaped, those still there, and the people helping others to change their lives.
Director: Lorna Tucker
Produced by City Bridge Trust and Dartmouth Films and presented by MBK Productions
Film-maker Carol Morley uncovered a huge archive about a promising Royal Academy student whose life was changed by a mental breakdown. She describes her journey into Audrey Amiss’s world
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“Carol Morley’s warm and sympathetic film imagines the artist, whose mental illness curtailed her ambitions, on a tragicomic road trip to exhibit her work.”
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“Writer-director Carol Morley’s latest dance with the unheard voices of the vulnerable is an acquired taste that’s worth championing.”
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“Typist Artist Pirate King is a semi-biographical picture that celebrates the mind and its complexity, as well as the freedom of a woman healing her inner child. It is a redemptive narrative on mental illness and a love letter to psychiatric nurses.”
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“Carol Morley’s affectionate imagining of the Sunderland-born artist, whose career was hampered by mental illness, is an evocative depiction of an unjustly neglected figure.”
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“‘Typist Artist Pirate King’ continues
Sarah McCarthy is no stranger to navigating the myriad challenges posed by authoritarian states. Indeed, the Australian doc-maker has shot in precarious political places throughout the world, from the Philippines, to Saudi Arabia to Russia—where she’s returned time and time again.
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Telluride: A comprehensive look at the former German chancellor follows her indirect path to becoming the most powerful woman in the world.
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Eva Weber looks at the life of the former German Chancellor with an eye on both the personal and the political
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Eva Weber looks at the life of the former German Chancellor with an eye on both the personal and the political
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German-born filmmaker Eva Weber gathers fresh interviews with figures like Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Tony Blair to fill in Merkel's achievements in this doc premiering at Telluride.
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Documentarian Sarah McCarthy’s Anastasia may only run 27 minutes, but its impact will be felt for much longer. Anastasia Shevchenko is the first person ever to be found guilty of “organizing activity of an undesirable organization” by the Russian justice system. She was sentenced to four years, though it was suspended. However, bear in mind that all Shevchenko did was speak out against Putin and his government.
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Russian activist Anastasia Shevchenko was arrested and detained under house arrest for two years for speaking out against the government, with devastating personal consequences. As Anastasia and her family travel across Russia by train, she comes to grips with her loss and what it means to fight for freedom.
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Carol Morley presents a fictionalised portrait of little-known avant-garde schizophrenic artist Audrey Amiss
Read ReviewThe Khodorkovsky Foundation is a UK-registered charity founded by Russian business leader, public figure and philanthropist Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2004. Khodorkovsky, whose own story was featured in Citizen K, a documentary by Alex Gibney, is a longstanding opponent of the Putin regime. He was once Russia’s most famous political prisoner, having spent 10 years in jail on politically motivated charges from 2003-2013. He continues his fight for freedom and democracy in Russia.
The Foundation’s mission is to give young generations of ordinary Russians the educational opportunities, skills and values needed to build a strong, vibrant and democratic civil society in Russia. The Foundation’s work has never been more vital, yet challenging in the face of the Ukrainian war and the intensified crackdown on the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens.
In 2021, the Russian authorities labelled the foundation “an undesirable organisation” and categorised its activities as a threat to Russia’s national security interests. This decision forced the foundation to close its charitable activities inside Russia.
The same year, the Foundation launched a new film grant programme to support stories of courage and resistance to Putin’s regime and help Russian talents leaving Russia in protest against the war in Ukraine to continue their work.
