What if your job was shooting five naked strangers daily before lunch?
Srubov is a part of CHEKA, the secret police Lenin established after the Bolshevik Revolution. They arrest, interview for a minute, try in ten seconds, and execute intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergy, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. No one to remember their last words; no martyrs, just anonymous bodies. Daily, the kangaroo court, the executions, the loading of bodies onto wagons. Srubov is cold, distant, sexually dysfunctional, and a deep thinker, hated by former friends and his family. As he tries to reason the nature of revolution and the purpose of CHEKA, he slowly goes mad.
Acting
Igor Sergeev's dead eyes deserve an award that doesn't exist.
Direction
Rogozhkin makes 91 minutes feel like months of psychological rot.
Production
Basement set so oppressive you'll check your own breathing.
Director
Aleksandr Rogozhkin
Igor Sergeev
Andrey Pavlovich Srubov
Aleksey Poluyan
Jan Pepel
Mikhail Vasserbaum
Isaak Kats
Sergei Isavnin
Semyon Khudonogov
Vasiliy Domrachyov
Yefim Solonin
Aleksandr Medvedev
Ivan Mudynya
Igor Golovin
commandant
Nina Usatova
cleaner
Viktor Khozyainov
Naum Nepomnyaschiy
Ivan Shvedoff
Vladimir Ermilov
Sergey Zamorev
family doctor
Yevgeni Tilicheyev
Pedestrian in plaid trousers
Tatyana Zhuravleva
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Rogozhkin made this during Soviet collapse; Russian critics called it 'anti-Russian,' proving its point.
The five-door execution set was based on actual CHEKA basement layouts from archival records.
FR
RU
