New Restoration

“Radical, sprawling … A movie that breaks all the usual rules when it comes to telling a story and clearly distinguishing between fiction and documentary, fantasy and reality, ​‘prose’ and ​‘poetry,’ anger and detachment.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

An avant-garde comedy and a strangely linked collection of tragic short stories, Kira Muratova’s The Asthenic Syndrome might be the final great work of the Soviet film industry. Her methods, which put her at odds with official culture, are closest to the agitated madness and theatrical despair of Aleksei German (Hard to Be a God) and Andrei Zulawski (Possession). But what most sets Syndrome apart is its jarring use of sound—a collage of classical compositions, Altmanesque overlapping dialogue, pop songs, silence, and harsh transitions—which renders the film a survey of unexpected, joyous phenomena one moment, and apocalyptic chaos the next. The film begins with Natasha (Olga Antonova), newly widowed and violently sick of the unfeeling world. Muratova intimately charts her behaviour, then expands outward to a teacher and his neighbours, boss, and students. As a symbolic and drily humourous comedown, perhaps Muratova’s only modern comparison is Radu Jude’s essayistic dramas.

In Russian and English with English subtitles

Special Jury Prize
Berlinale 1990

“The only masterpiece of glasnost cinema.”

Andrey Dementyev, poet

“An epic and shocking portrait of the late 1980s … Here Muratova sharpens her ​‘classic’ lyrical style and fills it with contrasts that are both dark and grotesque.”

Evgeny Gusyatinskiy, Senses of Cinema

“Every time I am asked what the film is about I reply, quite honestly, ​‘It’s about everything.’”

Kira Muratova
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