Even before it was released, Russian director Alexey Balabanov’s CARGO 200 was acknowledged as one of the most significant – and disturbing – films of the year. Called “a bitter treat for strong-stomached, adventurous audiences tired of safe arthouse fare ” and “the year’s grizzliest cinematic ghost-ride ,” this gritty neo-thriller based on actual events expertly paints an unremittingly dark and unflinching portrait of the decline of the Soviet era. And now, this bold and controversial film – an official selection of more than 35 international film festivals, including Venice, Telluride, Rotterdam and Los Angeles – makes its DVD debut on April 28 for $24.95SRP from The Disinformation Company.
NEW YORK, NY – Even before it was released, Russian director Alexey Balabanov’s CARGO 200 was acknowledged as one of the most significant – and disturbing – films of the year. Called “a bitter treat for strong-stomached, adventurous audiences tired of safe arthouse fare ” and “the year’s grizzliest cinematic ghost-ride ,” this gritty neo-thriller based on actual events expertly paints an unremittingly dark and unflinching portrait of the decline of the Soviet era. And now, this bold and controversial film – an official selection of more than 35 international film festivals, including Venice, Telluride, Rotterdam and Los Angeles – makes its DVD debut on April 28 for $24.95SRP from The Disinformation Company.
The time is 1984. On the verge of Perestroika, when the gloom of Soviet life has reached extreme depths, CARGO 200 begins with the introduction of two brothers: a Soviet Army colonel and the head of the Faculty of Scientific Communism at Leningrad University. As the professor travels to a remote town to visit his mother, his car breaks down, and he’s forced to stop at a rural farmhouse occupied by a husband, wife and their Vietnamese farm hand. Before long, he finds himself engaged in a philosophical argument about the existence of God with the husband, whose heated criticisms of official atheism are fueled equally by utopian dreams and the vodka distilled in the family barn. Meanwhile, after meeting at a party, a young man and the daughter of a Soviet secretary of a regional party committee, decide to take a drive. Their destination? The same rural farmhouse, where now lurking in the shadows is Officer Zhurov, the local chief of police and a character loosely based on the notorious Russian serial killer, Gennady Mikhasevich. While Mikhasevich was simply a depraved lunatic, director Balabanov presents Zhurov as an emblem of both human perversion and the manifest corruption of the Soviet government. And it’s his appearance that signals a series of loathsome events that form the rest of the film’s narrative.
A grim epitaph for the death of the former Soviet Union, Balabanov (Brother, Of Freaks and Men) titled his 12th film after the Russian military term for the coffins transporting dead soldiers back home during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The effects of that decade-long conflict provide a unifying theme for this highly controversial film that recalls the work of Gaspar Noe and Michael Haneke, but with a distinctly Russian point-of-view.
CARGO 200 is presented in widescreen (1.85:1) and is in Russian with English subtitles.
The Disinformation Company Ltd. is active in TV production, book publishing and home entertainment. It is most widely recognized for its distribution of products on subjects not usually covered by the traditional media. Recent DVD exclusives from The Disinformation Company include Michael Moore’s Slacker Uprising, the best-selling Robert Greenwald documentaries Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, and Unconstitutional: The War on our Civil Liberties, as well as Robert Baer’s The Cult of the Suicide Bomber, and the Sean Penn-narrated War Made Easy.
