The end of the Soviet Union is the ultimate horror show in this brilliantly grotesque film from the director of Brother. "A superbly-acted, finely-directed, vision of hell." — Time Out
Screened as part of NZIFF 2008
Cargo 200 2007
Gruz 200
The year is 1984 and "Cargo 200" is code for a shipment from Afghanistan: a shipment of dead Russian soldiers. This darkly disturbing story is an allegory of Soviet society in terminal collapse. A bleak industrial hellhole in Kazakhstan forms the crossroads for an unlikely collection of comrades. A professor of atheism, a party-hearty young couple and a wannabe entrepreneur (with the local Party chief's daughter in hand) all cross paths at an isolated and illegal drinking hole patrolled by a local police captain - a violent sexual psychopath. Director Alexei Balabanov (Of Freaks and Men, Brother) fuses the cinematic purity of Tarkovsky's Stalker with the amoral bleakness of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. A Battleship Potemkin for the new century, Cargo 200's nihilistic black humour smashes the last remaining rose-tinted glasses of any Russian still pining for the pre-perestroika, proverbial "good old days". — MS