Feslett Filmklub – 4 (Ilja Krzanovszkij, 2004)

The story of *4* kicks off with the surreal pub bluff of three strangers crossing paths in a night-time Moscow bar—where one of them lies about cloned beef cattle—before the plot drifts down into the bizarre, suffocating, and death-scented wake of a godforsaken Russian village.

Krzhanovsky and Sorokin confront us across a pub counter with the nightmarish, cloned hoarseness of post-Soviet reality. *4* was not made with the intent to entertain; its effect on the viewer is more like a shot of unfiltered moonshine in a remote Russian village: bitter, heavy on the stomach, yet unsparingly sobering with its suffocating, kitsch-free honesty. If you can handle it when art doesn't gently pet your head, but instead gives you a friendly boot behind the pub, do not miss this film!