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Delirium Tremens: Serebrennikov Maddens with Post-Soviet Magical Realism

Historically, Russian cinema (and literature) always tends to go for broke. Challenging narratives, endless characters, and opulent production designs are usually par for the course, meant to wash over one as a visceral experience the first time so one can go back and start puzzling together the formidable mechanisms packed into every sequence. Such is the case with the ninth feature from Kirill Serebrennikov, Petrov’s Flu, based on a cult novel by Alexey Salnikov (and which the director has already directed a stage production of). Maddening but not nonsensical, it’s an aggressive jolt of an immersive experience.…...

The Museum of the Moving Image is pleased to announce the complete lineup for the 11th edition of First Look, the Museum’s festival of new and innovative international cinema, which will take place in person March 16–20, 2022. The Festival introduces New York audiences to formally inventive works that seek to redefine the art form while engaging in a wide range of subjects and styles. The 2022 lineup includes both nonfiction and fiction, features and shorts, as well as forms that fall outside the boundaries of traditional theatrical distribution, from gallery presentations to live performances to artist talks. This year, the festival will premiere 38 works, including 18 features representing more than 30 countries. Artists will appear both in person and remotely.

“Now in its 11th year, First Look has evolved into an event reflective of both the current state of the cinematic arts and MoMI’s curatorial character and curiosity,” said Eric Hynes, Curator of Film.

Wes Anderson’s ’The French Dispatch’ and Kirill Serebrennikov’s ’Petrov’s Flu’ both received middling average scores on the grid.

Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and Kirill Serebrennikov’s Petrov’s Flu both received middling average scores on Screen’s 2021 Cannes jury grid, with more than half of the competition titles now seen by critics.

Six of our ten critics awarded Anderson’s latest a score of two (average), with it receiving a mean score of 2.3 overall. Only The Telegraph (Robbie Collin and Tim Robey) gave it a four (good), with Liberation’s critics Julien Gester and Didier Péron scoring...

Having taken with Leto a nostalgic look back on the Soviet Union’s underground music scene in the 1980s, Russian writer-director Kirill Serebrennikov (The Student) delves further into a past that’s never forgotten, never really past with his latest, Petrov’s Flu. Based on a novel by Alexey Salnikov, The Petrovs in and Around the Flu, this hallucinatory, deeply confusing but skillfully executed and mesmeric work flows back and forth across time periods, parts of the city of Yekaterinburg and its characters’ memories, often literally within the space of a single shot. Serebrennikov originally staged a theater adaptation of the book ...

Having taken with Leto a nostalgic look back on the Soviet Union’s underground music scene in the 1980s, Russian writer-director Kirill Serebrennikov (The Student) delves further into a past that’s never forgotten, never really past with his latest, Petrov’s Flu. Based on a novel by Alexey Salnikov, The Petrovs in and Around the Flu, this hallucinatory, deeply confusing but skillfully executed and mesmeric work flows back and forth across time periods, parts of the city of Yekaterinburg and its characters’ memories, often literally within the space of a single shot. Serebrennikov originally staged a theater adaptation of the book ...

It’s been two years since iconoclastic Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov was released from a 20-month period of house arrest on embezzlement charges widely considered to have been trumped up by the government. If things haven’t been plain sailing since then — the revived case ended in a suspended sentence last year, confining the director to his home country — he has at least been free to roam, work and film in Russia. Cue “Petrov’s Flu,” Serebrennikov’s first feature since his release, and a consummate answer to the admittedly niche question of just what kind of film one makes after such a period of confinement: one that moves as freely and recklessly as possible, untethered by short-leash rules of time, space or storytelling.

Tearing at a mile a minute through an extravagantly surreal vision of Yekaterinburg in the maddening grip of a flu epidemic, “Petrov’s Flu” is a rowdy, exhilarating...

He may be barred from leaving Russia and thus unable to travel to Cannes, but arthouse cinema favorite Kirill Serebrennikov is refusing to let that dampen his spirit ahead of the premiere of his latest movie, Petrov’s Flu, in the French fest’s Competition.

The filmmaker has been battling fraud charges in his home country for a number of years – charges which have been condemned by human rights organizations – but when Deadline catches up with him via video link to Moscow, he is relaxed, telling us he is happy that his new picture is getting out into the world after a long delay (it was due to screen at Cannes 2020), and to already be hard at work on his next feature.

Petrov’s Flu is a surreal journey through one man’s battle with the titular illness, and the irony of the film depicting such themes (the main character has a...

Moscow-based Ilya Stewart is one of the international film industry’s rising stars. After founding production co Hype in 2011 with Murad Osmann, the pair have rapidly grown the outfit into one of the hottest names in Russia across commercials, music videos, and feature films. Unsurprisingly, TV is also now in the company’s sights.

Hype has amassed an impressive number of credits over its first decade of operation, but Stewart is largely recognized for his work with Kirill Serebrennikov. Their first film together, 2016’s The Student, won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes, and they returned two years later with Leto, which was selected to screen in Competition.

Their latest collaboration is Petrov’s Flu, the surreal and engaging story tracking a day in the life of a comic book artist suffering from the flu, which causes him to drift between fantasy and reality. The film, which is adapted...

Set to return to Cannes competition after his impressive rock ‘n roll drama Leto, director Kirill Serebrennikov’s latest work is Petrov’s Flu. Although conceived before the pandemic, the adaptation of Alexey Salnikov’s 2018 novel “The Petrovs In and Around the Flu” certainly has new resonance as it captures life in a post-Soviet Russia, specifically in a city in the throes of a flu epidemic. Ahead of a Cannes premiere, a new trailer has now arrived.

Described as a deadpan, hallucinatory romp, the film follows the Petrov family as they struggle through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fueled, icy fever dream of violence and tenderness.

The film was written while the director was on house arrest in Moscow. “I was under house arrest for almost two years,” he told THR. “But the last year I was quite free.

Last week, it was announced that “Petrov’s Flu,” the new Russian language film by Kirill Serebrennikov, will bow in competition at the Cannes Film Festival this summer for the pic’s world premiere. In addition, they’ve released an enticing trailer (see below) with English subtitles that echo the comedic tone and showcases Serebrennikov’s strong visual style.

Read More: Sean Baker, Andrea Arnold, Mia Hanson-Love, Asghar Farhadi New Films Announced For 2021 Cannes Film Festival

Based on the novel “The Petrovs In and Around the Flu” by Alexey Salnikov, “Petrov’s Flu” is a “deadpan, hallucinatory romp through post-Soviet Russia.

Continue reading ‘Petrov’s Flu’ Trailer: Visually Striking Pandemic Comedy By Russian Filmmaker Kirill Serebrenninkov Premieres At Cannes at The Playlist.

The film is described as ’a deadpan romp through post-Soviet Russia”.

Screen can exclusively reveal the first trailer for Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s new film Petrov’s Flu ahead of its world premiere in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival in July.

Based on the novel The Petrovs In And Around Flu by Alexey Sainikov, Petrov’s Flu is described as a “deadpan, hallucinatory romp through Post-Soviet Russia”.

“With the city in the throes of a flu epidemic, the Petrov family struggles through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fuelled, icy...

Petrov’s Flu

Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov 2004 film Ragin, based on a Chekov story, won the East of West Award at Karlovy Vary and 2008’s Yuriy’s Day picked up several awards in Locarno. In 2012, Betrayal competed in Venice, and 2016’s The Student went to Un Certain Regard in Cannes and he quickly followed this with 2018’s Leto – his first comp film. For his eighth feature, Serebrennikov, still unable to leave Moscow despite being released from house of arrest in April of 2019, has completed Petrov’s Flu, based on Alexey Salnikov’s (a contemporary writer compared to Bulgakov or Gogol) novel The Petrovs in Various Stages of the Flu (he scripted the project while under house arrest).…...

Kirill Serebrennikov, the celebrated Russian director of both stage and screen, reached a new audience with his previous feature, the Cannes competition rock ‘n roll drama Leto. While he recently announced plans to make a limited series on Andrei Tarkovsky’s life, the director was also tipped to premiere his latest film, Petrov’s Flu, at Cannes Film Festival this year. Considering the festival was canceled, it was reported the film will hold out for next year’s edition. Now, the first look has now arrived thanks to a Russian teaser trailer.

The project, an adaptation of Alexey Salnikov’s novel, follows a day in the life of a comic book artist and his family in post-Soviet Russia. While suffering from the flu, Petrov is carried by his friend Igor on a long walk, drifting in and out of fantasy and reality. The film was written while the director was on house arrest in Moscow.