Two lives, one architect, zero easy answers — Soviet surrealism that'll melt your brain.
The strange title is explained by the fact that there are two films in the film: one is about a real day in the life of the real Moscow architect Alexander Petrovich Chernov, his mental crisis; and the other is Chernov’s fiction. There is a different fate, a different country, a different life. It is into this very life that Chernov strives to get into - and for the sake of a trip to Spain he will have to commit betrayal. There, for a moment, the doubles will be nearby and both will be on the verge of death. Who will die in the spring of 1978?
Direction
Yursky blurs reality and fiction until neither feels real.
Production
Moscow 1978 vs. imagined Spain — same gray, different prisons.
Director
Sergei Yursky
Andrey Smirnov
Chernov
Elena Yakovleva
Irina / Irene
Oleg Basilashvili
Seva Yarmak
Mikhail Danilov
Lev Deyan
Yelena Koreneva
Yelena Trukhanovich
Sergei Yursky
Arnold
Dmitry Bulba
Pyotr, Chernov's son
Shirvani Chalaev
Khalaf
Andrei Tolubeyev
Gleb Gusev
Sergey Makovetskiy
Kostya Shlyapin
Natalya Tenyakova
Tanya, Chernov's wife
Lyubov Strizhenova
Seva Yarmak's wife
Darya Yurskaya
Chernov's neighbor
Pavel Lyubimtsev
Swift
Igor Ugolnikov
Train Conductor
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during perestroika's final gasp, the film smuggled metaphysical despair past censors by wrapping it in 'architectural documentary' clothing.
Andrey Smirnov plays both Chernovs without costume changes — the audience must decode identity through spatial context alone.
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