Beauty

Beauty (2026) is a Russian war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Anton Bogdanov — set inside the Leningrad Zoo during the first winter of the city's siege, with Yulia Peresild, Viktor Sukhorukov, and Slava Kopeykin.

December 1941. The city is encircled. Sergeant Nikolai Svetlov is discharged from hospital after a shell concussion and posted not to the front but to the zoo — to guard animals that can barely be fed. He arrives angry; there's a war on and he's been handed a bucket of water for a hippo. The keepers, including Peresild's character, see it differently: a living zoo in a starving city is not a small thing. At the centre is Krasavitsa, a hippopotamus who survived every day of the siege because her keepers hauled warm water through the winter to keep her alive.

Bogdanov keeps the film unheroic on purpose. No battle sequences, no speeches — just people showing up to an ordinary job under extraordinary conditions. Svetlana Nemolyaeva, Ivan Dobronravov, and Maria Aronova complete an ensemble that makes this a portrait of collective stubbornness rather than individual sacrifice. Stream Beauty (2026) online on iFILM.