A mayor's murder exposes a city eating itself from within. No heroes, just vultures in suits.
In the regional centre Kuznetsky the mayor has been killed in his office. The murderer is Dimur Kavsadze, in charge of commercial construction work for the city administration. A squall of public concern beleaguers the city. Alexander Danilin is an undercover curator, an intermediary between the business and the authorities; he tries to eliminate trouble and return life to normal. The cause of the tragedy was a construction project, which wrapped itself around Kuznetsky like a tumour, and which was a source of profit for the authorities and the local builders. The construction “devours” free land, the souls of people and even what seems beyond the law of profit: the family. Neither the death of people, nor common sense can stop the construction…
Direction
Levchenko's cold, clinical gaze refuses easy catharsis.
Acting
Tsurilo's Danilin: a man hollowed out by his own function.
Cinematography
Grey concrete swallowing human scale whole.
Director
Petr Levchenko
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Kuznetsky's fictional corruption mirrors real Russian 'city-forming enterprises' where municipal construction became patronage machines. The 2020 release timing—pandemic hollowed budgets—made its critique sting sharper.
Danilin's 'curation' borrows from art-world terminology: selecting, framing, making palatable. The film asks who curates the curators when the whole gallery is burning.
RU
