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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...

‘Mama Weed’ starring Isabelle Huppert, is also opening in France.

France, opening Wednesday September 9

The French box office appeared to be on route to recovery in the first week of September thanks to the launch of Tenet and a wider range of titles on release generally. It now remains to be seen if this momentum can be sustained with further US studio releases remaining elusive and the country on high alert following a spike in Covid-19 cases.

French cinemas this week will mainly be reliant on local films to draw spectators.

This week’s biggest release is Jean-Paul Salomé’s...

At this point I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like this is going to be a feature length film. I'm still waiting for details from our friend D'mooN over at Opium (who gave us the heads up) to provide further details, but I can tell you that the 50 stills and pieces of concept art we have are nothing short of stunning, sort of a mixture of scifi, cyberpunk, steampunk, and Shel Silverstein (see Where the Sidewalk Ends). From what I can gather, it's possibly post apocalyptic and is about the slums of the galaxy.

Summary of the original film:

Two humans (Dyadya Vova and Skripach) accidentally found themselves on another planet after pushing the wrong button on the strange device in the hand of an odd looking alien. Planet "Plyuk" in the galaxy "Kin-Dza-Dza" looks like a desert. All the aliens look exactly like humans, and can understand Russian, because they can read thoughts,...