🎬 Citizens of Unreason #2: ‘Khrustalyov, My Car!’ (1998)

‘Citizens of Unreason’ peers into the claustrophobic worlds of suspicion, censorship, and quiet revolt under the Soviet gaze, idem the fragile human logic that persists when reason itself is policed.

KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR! 
Aleksei Yuryevich German | 1998 | Russia, France | 150’ | EN subtitles

January 1953, Moscow holds its breath. Stalin is dying. Military surgeon General Yuri Glinsky finds himself caught in the machinery of the so-called Doctors’ Plot, accused alongside other predominantly Jewish physicians of conspiring against Soviet leaders. Arrested and sent away, he is abruptly returned to the capital when he proves to be the only one capable of treating the ailing dictator.

In his film, Aleksei German depicts this historical moment in luminous black and white, the film immerses us in a world where hospital corridors resemble prison cells and communal apartments feel like battlegrounds. 

The title echoes the phrase allegedly cried out by secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria at the moment of Stalin’s death, yet the expected hero never appears. Instead, we follow a man whose life is shaped by humiliation and sudden reversals of fate. 

TW: Sexual Violence