FFFA: Petrov's Flu

“Breathtaking filmmaking… palpably visionary and abrasively obscure, an intensely expressive work.” - Little White Lies

In a flu-stricken, semi-dystopian post-soviet Russia, Petrov is a comic book artist who is thrust from one frenzied set piece to another: a bus full of cretins, an alien abduction, a hearse carrying a corpse that may or may not be dead, and a possessed ex-wife on a vengeful and bloody rampage. Petrov’s Flu is a literal cinematic fever dream of jaw-dropping proportions, where memory, fantasy and reality blur.

Adapting a novel by Aleksey Salnikov, Kirill Serebrennikov developed the screenplay while under house arrest. The result is a devastatingly sharp critique of a country in the grip of an unfeeling and uncaring state. Sometimes hilarious, other times repulsive, but always captivating, Petrov’s Flu is the psychotic episode of a beast unleashed.

FFFA unequivocally condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but supports dissident artists working within Russia. 

Rating

E

Language

Russian (English Subtitles)

Cast

Semyon Serzin, Chulpan Khamatova, Vladislav Semiletkov

Director

Kirill Serebrennikov