For decades, a huge cache containing some of the most vibrant and beautiful paintings in 20th-century modern art languished in a museum located in the southern desert of the former Soviet Union — unseen and almost entirely forgotten by the rest of the world. The Desert of Forbidden Art peels back the last remnants of Joseph Stalin’s Iron Curtain to reveal an extraordinary collection of work by Russia’s avant-garde, a massive collection of some 44,000 lost works that rival, in technique and relevance, those of Picasso, Kandinsky, Gauguin, Matisse and Van Gogh. Documentary filmmakers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev tell the story of museum curator Igor Savitsky, who tirelessly traveled the breadth of the Soviet Union to rescue and eventually display works deemed degenerate and anti-Soviet by party leaders. (Because they had rejected the prevailing state-approved art and remained true to their own, very personal, visions, many of the artists had been jailed.) Savitsky’s singular obsession in establishing a “museum of the artists’ souls” has preserved the beauty of artifacts created during a time of indifference and persecution. (Uzbekistan/Russia/USA | 80 mins) Read our story about this