Introduction. N. A. Berdyaev’s philosophical texts are characterized by cinematic qualities, reflecting his thinking method based on visual integrity and montage-like construction of meaning. Berdyaev himself noted that the key ideas of his works were inspired by cinema rather than traditional art forms. The literary metaphoricity of his texts is rooted in the experience of the staticity of a cinema-goer. Theoretical analysis. The article explores how cinematic techniques (contrast, montage, pseudo-quotation) structure Berdyaev’s texts, creating an effect of immediate intellectual experience. His anti-theatricality is contrasted with the theatricality of Soviet humanitarian concepts (Bakhtin, Vygotsky), where knowledge is constructed through dialogue with an “audience”. Berdyaev, however, rejects literary conventions, relying instead on cinematic conventions that paradoxically reveal the unconditionality of freedom. His cinematographic engagement serves as a method for juxtaposing diverse cultures and distilling the essence of freedom. Conclusion. A comparison with Walter Benjamin shows that both thinkers saw cinema as a tool to overcome linear time and bourgeois artistic conformism. Yet, while Benjamin analyzes medieval formalism as a lost semiotics, Berdyaev interprets it as an ascetic labor of the spirit, akin to directorial restraint. For Berdyaev, cinema is not merely a metaphor but a philosophical method alternative to theatrical illusion.