The film “4″ (“CHETYRE”)

with a screenplay by Vladimir Sorokin

• WHEN: Wednesday, 17th October, 8:00pm
• WHERE: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, Trinity Street, Cambridge

“4″ (2005), directed by Ilya Krzizhanovsky, has won several international awards despite being initially banned in Russia for its ‘offensiveness’. This dark, surreal production opens with a late-night conversation in a Moscow bar between a meat-packer, a prostitute and a piano tuner. Each pretends to a different, more exciting life. The next day the prostitute leaves for her home village, a bleak and devastated place inhabited by alcoholic old women who survive by producing dolls made from straw and dough. “4″ is a darkly parodic journey through post-Soviet Russia. Vladimir Sorokin’s screenplay reproduces his trademark visions of banal evil urban despair.