Soviet bureaucracy meets mother nature in a race to see which destroys the city first.
A natural disaster is approaching the city—weather forecasters report that a hurricane is coming. In this extreme situation, the complete incompetence of the people who are duty-bound to do everything possible to save the city from destruction has become apparent. The situation is further complicated by the fact that there is a large chemical plant in the city, the explosion of which would result in heavy casualties. The director of the plant, Gorev, decides to shut down the plant...
Acting
Bakshtayev's exhausted everyman energy is devastating.
Direction
Omelchuk builds dread through empty corridors, not explosions.
Director
Serhiy Omelchuk
Andrei Alyoshin
Vladimir Garadzha (zhenikh Galki)
Leonid Bakshtayev
Maxim Pavlovich Gorev
Lyudmila Nilskaya
Marina Andreevna Sabova
Aleksandr Belyavskiy
Vadim Vadimovich Syrovatsky
Yurii Mazhuha
Ivan Kharitonovich Turchak
Yuriy Shlykov
Boris Ivanovich Karakhan
Andrii Podubynskyi
Stepan Timofeevich Kosar
Igor Taradaikin
Matvey Nikolaevich Likholat
Kostiantyn Stepankov
Romanyuk - head of the city police department, colonel
Gennadi Bolotov
Petr Fedorovich Volokusha - deputy director of the plant
Viktor Stepanenko
Vladimir Mikhailovich Anishchenko - deputy chief engineer
Iryna Doroshenko
Varvara
Mikhail Golubovich
начальник автотранспорта
Yuriy Rudchenko
Oleg Petrovich
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during perestroika, this captures the USSR's collapsing faith in its own systems—Glasnost allowed directors to finally show incompetence as institutional, not individual.
The chemical plant was a real location in Crimea; Omelchuk filmed during an actual storm warning, which explains the documentary-level dread in crowd scenes.
SU
