Petrov's Flu

While the peaceful city of Yekaterinburg is plagued by a flu epidemic, the car mechanic/comic artist Petrov, weakened by a high fever, is on a bus. First he is taken off the bus by the police, not much later he is taken by his old friend Igor in a funeral car on a long, drunken ramble. It becomes a hallucinatory journey somewhere between dream and reality, in which Petrov's childhood memories from the Soviet era surface and become fused with the present.

Petrov's Flu is a black comedy by Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov (The Student, Leto). This first film after his house arrest is an adaptation of the novel Petrovy v grippe (The Petrovs In and Around the Flu) by Alexei Salnikov. The result is a delirious trip full of unbridled energy and visual spectacle. The film was selected for the main competition in Cannes, where it was very well received by the international press.