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Like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Georgiy Daneliya’s 1986 film Kin-dza-dza! is, at bottom, biting social satire disguised as dystopian science fiction. Deploying unabashedly absurdist humor, both films decry the alienating effects of bureaucracy, abhor the arbitrary terrors imposed by an authoritarian regime, and exhibit a fascination with the makeshift nature of technology in their respective brave new worlds. While taking cues from contemporary events in the Soviet Union, Kin-dza-dza! nevertheless expands the scope of its satire to include not only Western capitalism, but, more importantly for its staying power, the follies and failings of our shared humanity.

Kin-dza-dza! also reveals a certain kinship with Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series since both feature clueless humans being whisked off on interplanetary adventures that force them to confront bizarre and often byzantine customs and regulations. At the start of Kin-dza-dza!, construction manager Vladiimir “Uncle Vova” Mashkov (Stanislav Lyubshin) and...