Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has been invited to back-to-back Cannes for his latest work, premiering Petrov’s Flu last year and Tchaikovsky’s Wife this year. The former is now finally getting a U.S. release this September, courtesy of Strand Releasing, and a new trailer has now arrived.
A deadpan, hallucinatory romp through post-Soviet Russia, see the film’s synopsis: “With the city in the throes of a flu epidemic, the Petrov family struggles through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fueled, icy fever dream of violence and tenderness, and where, beneath the layers of the ordinary, things turn out to be quite extraordinary. Part science fiction, mystery and dark comedy, this Cannes Film Festival entry is a unique hybrid of genres.”
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Petrov’s Flu opens on a stuffy commute—a Moscow bus in the early years of post-Soviet Russia. The eponymous protagonist is already bent over a handrail, stricken with his affliction. The mood is fevered, almost circus-like, the lighting like pea soup. In a moment of madness, Petrov (played by Semyon Serzin) is dragged from the bus by militiamen in Mexican wrestling masks. Hard rock plays. He takes a gun and joins their firing squad, mowing down some nameless humans. The mind briefly wanders to Brazil, and somehow Songs from the Second Floor.”
See the trailer below.
Petrov’s Flu opens on September 23 at IFC Center and will expand..