Outskirts

Named after the 1933 Boris Barnet classic (of which it's the rueful shadow remake), Lutsik's sparky debut is a cruel, comic fable about grim peasant vigilantes going on a killing spree to reclaim their land rights. Shot deadpan in glacial monochrome, it has an earnest absurdity fully worthy of Monty Python: grizzled kulaks forming human igloos to survive the cold during overnight stops, a neo-capitalist gangster executive whose all white office has shelves stacked to the ceiling with oil samples from the fields he has pillaged. As the violence escalates, so does the underlying vehemence, underscored by the use of music recycled from Stalinist propaganda warhorses of the 1930s. Highly original, and probably as accurate an account of current social chaos in Russia as any other.