About

Aleksei German’s black comedy Khrustalyov, My Car! is a baroque, absurdist depiction of the final gasps of Stalinism. The film follows Klensky (Yuri Tsurilo), a barrel-chested, mustachioed military surgeon who oversees a large Moscow hospital. After accidentally stumbling upon his doppelgänger in a hidden room at the hospital, he realises that a double is being prepared to confess at a show trial so he can be purged. He decides he must go into hiding, but his desperate attempts to leave the city only seem to take him further down an inescapable rabbit hole.

Shot and edited over seven years, Khrustalyov, My Car! is an immersive fever dream of a film. German infuses every frame with surreal paranoia: characters dance and roar as if in a widespread mania, busts of Stalin and animal heads loom within each interior, and voices trip over each other in a mix of whispers and shouts. Recently restored in 2K, this is an intricately designed portrait of a world in collapse, with German plunging the audience into the madness.

Ages 18+ | Contains sexual violence and strong coarse language