Khrustalyov, My Car!

Synopsis: Late winter 1953. The lives of nearly half the planet are in Stalin’s hands. A military surgeon, General Yuri Georgievich Klensky, finds himself a target of the ‘Doctors’ Plot’: the anti-Semitic conspiracy accusing Jewish doctors in Moscow of planning to assassinate the Soviet elite. Pursued, abused, and marked for the gulags, Yuri is chased and dragged through a Stalinist Soviet nightmare. His desperate, jolting journey encapsulates the madness of the era.
The film proved wildly provocative when it was screened at the 1998 Cannes film festival, despite being championed as the best film of the festival by the president of the Cannes jury that year, Martin Scorsese. "It remains fascinating, maddening...inexhaustible as a hyperdense viewing and listening experience...a truly Brueghelian vision of Soviet life, deeply informed by the fabulist literary imaginations of Gogol and Dostoevsky (J. Romney, Sight & Sound, Aug 2019).
Russian language with English subtitles.
Language: Russian
Country: Russian Federation
Year of production: 1998
Subjects: Social Studies; Russian studies
Keywords: anti-Semitism; Russia; Stalin, Josef; experimental fiction; Stalinism

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