A virus tears through Rus­sia in the eeri­ly time­ly trail­er for Petrov’s Flu

We’ve all got­ten used to a home­bound lifestyle over what will soon be the past two years, but Russia’s most embat­tled film­mak­er Kir­ill Sere­bren­nikov is no stranger to such iso­lat­ing con­di­tions. Placed under house arrest in 2017 on a ques­tion­able charge of fraud (his out­spo­ken dis­si­dence toward the gov­ern­ment may have had some­thing to do with it), he’s had plen­ty of time to con­sid­er the soli­tude and alien­ation we’re now tak­ing for granted.

These two sources of dis­con­nec­tion com­bine in his lat­est fea­ture, the Cannes-fet­ed Petrov’s Flu, the offi­cial trail­er for which appeared online today. Shoot­ing under cov­er of night while rep­re­sent­ing him­self by day, Sere­bren­nikov has chan­neled recent absur­di­ties and frus­tra­tions into a sto­ry that tack­les the pan­dem­ic in blunt terms, yet at an angle.

In the post-Sovi­et sub­urb of Yeka­ter­in­burg, the auto mechan­ic Petrov (Semy­on Serzin) finds that he and his fam­i­ly have come down with a vicious sick­ness. As they do their best to con­va­lesce, real­i­ty starts col­laps­ing around them, most notably in the sub­plot con­cern­ing a rean­i­mat­ed corpse and the Franken­stein­ian fig­ure respon­si­ble for it, the odd­ball Igor (Yuri Kolokolnikov).

Mark Asch, our man in Cannes last year, did his best to pin down this strange spec­i­men of a film in his review, writ­ing that ​“This is breath­tak­ing film­mak­ing, but would be a lit­tle hard to take for two-and-a-half hours. Thank­ful­ly, Sere­bren­nikov has more tricks up his sleeve.” He reserved praise for the ​“blind-drunk grotesques” in ​“what is essen­tial­ly a lit­er­al fever dream about con­tem­po­rary Rus­sia in all its dark, out­sized, incred­u­lous glory.”

Serebrennikov’s lat­est will soon take its place along­side the recent Bad Luck Bang­ing in the emerg­ing canon of sharp COVID-com­ment­ing films, pre­sent­ing a vision of a present-day Rus­sia reel­ing from dis­trust and vio­lence. While Eng­lish-lan­guage cin­e­ma still awaits its first pan­dem­ic mas­ter­piece, this will cer­tain­ly pro­vide some point­ers for those who dare to try.

Petrov’s Flu comes to cin­e­mas in the UK on 11 February.