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Please note: this screening has been cancelled in line with Queensland Government’s new COVID-19 restrictions.

'We didn't really want to depict 1953, we wanted to show what Russians are like.' - Aleksei German

Khrustalyov, My Car! will screen from a 2K digital restoration.

Aleksei German’s black comedy Khrustalyov, My Car! is a baroque, absurdist examination of the final gasps of Stalinism. The film follows Klensky (Yuri Tsurilo), a barrel-chested, moustachioed military officer and wealthy surgeon who oversees a large Moscow hospital. After stumbling across his doppelganger in a hidden room at the hospital, he realises that a double is being prepared for him so that he can be purged. Knowing his days are numbered, he decides he must go into hiding to avoid a one-way trip to the gulag – but his desperate attempts at escape only seem to take him further down the endless rabbit hole.

Shot and edited over seven years, and produced with a mix of Russian and French funding, Khrustalyov, My Car! is an immersive fever dream of a film. German infuses every frame with both paranoia and wild surrealism: characters dance and roar seemingly without cause, busts of Stalin and mounted animal heads loom over every interior, while voices run across each other in a mix of whispers and shouts. Recently given an impressive new 2K restoration, this is an intricately designed portrait of a world in collapse, with German plunging the audience into the madness.

Please note: this film contains a scene of impactful sexual violence.