Young Alisa is fed up with her life in Moscow, and moves to St. Petersburg. Her roommates in the collective flat are two junkies, Vel and her boyfriend Valera the Dead Man. First they fight, but soon the two women form a friendship. Together they even go after the Petersburg underworld when Dead Man is abducted because he can't pay his debts.
Cinematography
St. Petersburg as rotting cyberpunk dreamscape, all sodium vapor and despair.
Acting
Sutulova and Shalaeva's volatile chemistry—tender, bruised, unforgettable.
Production
DIY aesthetic that accidentally captures something authentically post-Soviet.
Director
Igor Voloshin
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during Russia's brief indie cinema boom, it captures the era's desperate energy before state control tightened. The 'cyberpunk' label was marketing—it's really about capitalism's wreckage.
Artur Smolyaninov (The Dead Man) was a rising star who later became a vocal Putin supporter—making his role as a disposable junkie retrospectively ironic.
RU
