Founded in 1924 in the USSR as a production unit of that nation's film monopoly, its output includes most of the more widely acclaimed Soviet-era films, ranging from works by Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Eisenstein, to Red Westerns, to the Akira Kurosawa co-production Dersu Uzala (Дерсу Узала) and War and Peace (Война и мир).

This film studio was named after the Moscow amalgamated factory Soyuzkino "Tenth Anniversary of October Revolution".

The Mosfilm intro, representing the monument "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman" by Vera Mukhina and Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, was introduced in 1947 in the musical comedy Springtime directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and starring Lyubov Orlova and Nikolai Cherkasov.

As of 2005, the company embraced ten independent studios, located within 13 sound stages occupying an area of 13,000 sq.

Tours through this "Russian Hollywood" included a view of Mosfilm's enormous depot with 170 tanks and 50 vintage cars.