Khrustalyov, My Car!

Director: Aleksei German

1998 / 147min / DCP

Titled after the apocryphal expression attributed to Soviet security chief Beria in the process of rushing to Stalin’s deathbed, this astonishing, blackly funny, and deliriously immersive film distills the anticipation and anxiety in the Moscow air in January, 1953, as the despot lay dying. A military surgeon, Yuri (Yuriy Tsurilo), finds himself a target as the “Doctors’ Plot,” an antisemitic conspiracy accusing Jewish doctors in Moscow of planning to assassinate Soviet brass, takes hold in the public imagination. Pursued, abused, and marked for the gulags, Yuri is chased and dragged through a Stalinist Russia seen in all of its snowbound surreality, his jolting journey encapsulating the madness of an era.