Zhmurki (Dead Man's Bluff, 2005) is set in 1990s Nizhny Novgorod, and Aleksei Balabanov filmed it there: in the Kovalikhinsky Baths, at Vodnik Stadium, by the Church of Elijah and in the Sirotkin House.
This route follows seven locations of Balabanov's black comedy about bandits of the 1990s, from the bathhouse that played a morgue to the house of the final showdown. Several stops have changed since the shoot, and one is closed to visitors.
Brigada is a crime series about four Moscow friends, Sasha Bely, Kosmos, Pchyola and Fil, who swear loyalty to each other on Sparrow Hills at dawn in 1989. Its plot visits the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment skyscraper and the Uzbekistan restaurant on Neglinnaya Street, and the series was written at Mosfilm and partly filmed in Taldom.
The route walks through the places the plot names in Moscow, then the studio where the script was written and the town where a station scene set in Chechnya was shot.
Kindergarten Cop (1990) is set in a small Oregon town and was filmed in Astoria, with the school picnic at Ecola State Park and the opening scene at a Santa Ana mall.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays LAPD detective John Kimble, who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher to find a drug lord's ex-wife and son. This route follows five places: the opening mall, downtown Commercial Street, the school, the picnic park and the house street. Some places are private or only approximate.
Grigori Rasputin's story runs from the village of Pokrovskoye to Saint Petersburg's Alexander Nevsky Lavra, Peterhof and the Yusupov Palace on the Moika, where he was killed in December 1916.
The route follows the peasant who became the tsar's controversial confidant: his birthplace, his first steps in the capital, his meeting with Nicholas II, the murder, the bridge where his body was found and his burial at Tsarskoye Selo. Much about his death is disputed, and the stops say so.
The Shawshank Redemption was filmed mostly in Ohio: Shawshank State Prison is the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, the opening trial is the Wyandot County Courthouse in Upper Sandusky, and the final beach is on Saint Croix.
The route follows Andy Dufresne from his trial to the Mansfield prison, the woodshop where Red hears Figaro, Brooks's halfway house and the Caribbean beach that stands in for Zihuatanejo.
The Exorcist is set in Georgetown, Washington DC, and opens in the ruins of Hatra in northern Iraq. The real Exorcist Steps, Healy Hall and Lauinger Library are on the Georgetown campus, and a hospital on Roosevelt Island stood in for a Washington scene.
The route follows the film from Merrin's dig at Hatra to the MacNeil house and the stairs where Father Karras falls.
Catherine the Great was born in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), crowned in the Moscow Kremlin and lived at Oranienbaum, the Winter Palace and Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg.
The route follows the German princess from her birth in 1729 through the 1762 coup and her coronation to her English garden and the Bronze Horseman statue she commissioned. Birthplace sources differ, so the first pin is approximate.
The moai of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) were carved at Rano Raraku quarry and raised on platforms such as Ahu Tongariki and Ahu Akivi, and the island's legends explain them: a founder who landed at Anakena, seven scouts turned to stone, statues that walked, and a birdman race at Orongo.
The route follows those stories from the landing beach to the quarry, the restored platforms and the cliff village above the sea. Oral traditions are told as traditions, not as proven history.
Pretty Woman is set in Los Angeles, mostly around Hollywood Boulevard, the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, with one night at the San Francisco Opera.
This route follows Vivian and Edward's week in story order, from the Hollywood street where they meet to the opera house. Some scenes were filmed elsewhere, such as the Ambassador Hotel lobby and the Cicada dinner, and the stops say so.
Where was Yamatai, the kingdom of Queen Himiko? The two leading answers are Yoshinogari in Saga, northern Kyushu, and Makimuku beside the Hashihaka Kofun in Sakurai, Nara.
The route follows the Wei Zhi account of Himiko from Iki Island and the Shikanoshima gold seal to the two rival sites, and ends at the burial mound often linked with her grave. The location of Yamatai is still unsettled.
Nobu Shirase led Japan's first Antarctic expedition in 1910–12, sailing the small ship Kainan Maru from Wellington and Sydney to the ice shelf, Bay of Whales and King Edward VII Land.
The route follows the doubtful welcome in Wellington, a winter camp at Parsley Bay in Sydney, a dash across the ice near Amundsen's Fram, and the museum in Shirase's hometown of Nikaho. Antarctic pins are approximate.
The Siege of Odawara of 1590 was fought at Odawara Castle in Kanagawa, with Toyotomi Hideyoshi's one-night castle at Ishigakiyama and Hōjō outposts at Hachigata, Hachiōji and Oshi.
Hideyoshi's army surrounded the Hōjō capital while other forces took its castles across the region one by one. This route follows the campaign through five castle sites, from the siege to the last holdouts, and most can still be visited as parks or ruins.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer (Shutokō Battle in Japan) is set on the Shuto Expressway: the C1 loop and the Bayshore Route in Tokyo, then Nagoya, Osaka and the Irohazaka mountain road at Nikko.
The route follows the series from its Tokyo expressway roots through the Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 city expansion to the Kaido Battle mountain spin-offs. The games recreate long roads, so pins mark one point on each.
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's 1540–42 expedition went from Montezuma Pass to Hawikuh, the Grand Canyon, Bernalillo and Kansas in search of a golden city. It found no gold.
The route follows six places tied to the journey, from the border memorial to Coronado Heights. Several routes and sites are only approximate, and the captions say so.
Sir John Franklin's 1845 search for the Northwest Passage began at Stromness in Orkney, passed Disko Bay in Greenland and Beechey Island, and ended off King William Island, where HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were trapped in ice in 1846. No one from the expedition came home.
The route follows the ships from Orkney to the Victory Point note, the last message the crew left, then to the two wrecks found in 2014 and 2016. Most Arctic stops are remote or protected, so treat them as map stories rather than places to visit.
The Berlin Wall ran past the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and Bernauer Straße, and much of that story can be walked today. It went up overnight on 13 August 1961 and stood until the border opened in November 1989.
This route follows the Wall from its first day to its afterlife: the gate it closed, the checkpoint where tanks faced each other, the station border hall, an escape tunnel, the memorial and the painted East Side Gallery.
Nelson Mandela's life runs from a Mbashe River village to the lawns of the Union Buildings in Pretoria, with stops at Fort Hare, Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, Robben Island and Victor Verster Prison along the way.
The route follows him from his birth in Mvezo on 18 July 1918 through student days, underground work, years in prison and his inauguration as South Africa's first democratically elected president on 10 May 1994. Most stops can be visited; the pins at Mvezo and Qunu mark the villages, not a single building.
In 1612 a Nizhny Novgorod merchant, Kuzma Minin, and Dmitry Pozharsky raised the volunteer army that cleared Polish forces from the Moscow Kremlin. The route follows it from the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin through Yaroslavl and the Trinity Lavra to Red Square.
The five stops trace the militia's march and the monuments to its leaders. The Yaroslavl pin marks the city, as the sources name no building.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater turned real places into levels: the Brooklyn Banks in New York, Venice Beach, Philadelphia's Love Park, a Tijuana arena, Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville and Alcatraz Island.
The route follows Pro Skater 2 and Pro Skater 4 from city plaza to island prison, and says what each spot is like in real life. Two pins are approximate where the game names a city but not the exact spot.
Good Bye, Lenin! is set in East Berlin and shot largely on Karl-Marx-Allee and around Alexanderplatz, where Alex hides the fall of East Germany from his coma-waking mother. Its famous flying Lenin statue was filmed on the avenue.
The route follows the plot through five places: the Kerners' flat on Berolinastraße, Alexanderplatz, the former Coca-Cola headquarters in Lichterfelde, Karl-Marx-Allee and the dacha in Finsterwalde. The flat's interiors were studio sets, so that pin is approximate.
Run Lola Run is set and filmed in Berlin: a U-Bahn station, the bank at Bebelplatz, the Oberbaum Bridge and a casino in Schöneberg's town hall.
Lola has 20 minutes to find 100,000 marks and save Manni, and the film replays them three times. This route follows the story through the real places where those scenes were shot, from the platform where the money is lost to the casino table where number 20 comes up twice. The film's own geography is loose, so the stops are filming sites rather than a running route.
Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), Benigni's film, is set in Arezzo and shot in Arezzo, Cortona, Montevarchi and Papigno. Guido's romance with Dora plays out around Piazza Grande, the abbey of Saints Flora and Lucilla and a villa in Montevarchi.
The route follows the story from Guido's arrival in 1939 to the camp of 1944. Several stops are stand-ins: the opera house is in Cortona and the camp was built near Papigno, not set in a real camp.
Edgar Wright's Cornetto films were shot on location: Shaun of the Dead in Crouch End, North Finchley and a New Cross pub, Hot Fuzz in Wells and Mill Hill, and The World's End in Letchworth Garden City.
This route follows the three films in release order, from a zombie-struck North London to a Somerset village that hides murderers and a Hertfordshire pub crawl where the locals turn out to be androids. The stops mix filming locations with the scenes shot there.
Trainspotting is set in Leith, Edinburgh, but was filmed almost entirely in Glasgow: only the opening chase down Princes Street and Calton Road was shot in the capital. Rouken Glen Park, Jordanhill School and a pub on Queen Margaret Drive fill in for Edinburgh, and Corrour station supplies the film's "great outdoors" scene.
The route follows Renton and his friends from Leith through the chase, the park, the bar and the school to a remote Highland platform. Where a location guide's pub or a bridge name is uncertain, the stop says so.
