Two men vanish—one rich, one weird. Only one corpse explodes. Soviet bureaucracy at its finest.
In the capital of a European country, two people have gone missing. One of them is Theodore Amsted, a successful official, a family man, and a fairly wealthy person. The other is Michael Moginson, a strange, reclusive oddball living in poverty. Soon, a body is found at a military training ground, the victim of a bomb explosion. The police begin an investigation...
Acting
Velikhov plays two men with eerie, understated precision.
Writing
Wicked Soviet satire where paperwork outwits everyone.
Direction
Three directors somehow create one coherent deadpan nightmare.
Director
Alina Kazmina
Evgeniy Velikhov
Теодор Амстед
Yelena Gogoleva
фру Амстед
Lyudmila Pirogova
Лейф
Viktor Khokhryakov
начальник полиции
Anatoliy Toropov
сыщик
Dmitri Pavlov
Йенсен
Gennadi Karnovich-Valua
Андерс
Sergei Markushev
Хогехольм
Vladimir Golovin
Херлуф Омфельт
Aleksandr Pronin
чиновник
Konstantin Mikhitarov
чиновник
Vladimir Kolosov
чиновник
Lyudmila Gajlikovskaya
служащая почты
Fyodor Mishin
чиновник
Irina Likso
фру Друссе
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during the Thaw era, this slyly critiques Soviet class structures while pretending to be simple entertainment—censors missed the knife.
Three directors were assigned because the original fell ill; the triple credit became a running joke in Soviet film circles.
SU
