These people have managed to gain iconic status far beyond the country of their birth. It may well be that you know them even better than your own celebrities, politicians, and monarchs.

Canada’s Cirque du Soleil has been tugged into a Kremlin row over Russian state support for the arts.

One of them executed over 1,500 compatriots, another spearheaded a retail fraud involving top officials, and the third one poisoned over a dozen people simply because she didn’t like them.

You can’t consider yourself a film buff unless you’ve seen at least half of these movies. We’ve arranged them from plain good to absolute masterpieces and timeless classics that have become part of the Russian psyche.