House of Fools / Дом Дураков

 

 

4 November, Sunday, 5:30 pm, Apollo Piccadilly Cinema, London

 

2002, Russia, 104 min Drama

 

Director Andrei Konchalovsky

Scriptwriter Andrei Konchalovsky

Music Eduard Artemyev

Camera Sergei Kozlov

Editing Olga Grinshpun

Starring Yuliya Vysotskaya, Yevgeni Mironov, Sultan Islamov, Stanislav Varkki, Elena Fomina

Producer Felix Kleiman, Andrei Konchalovsky, Sergei Khramtsov

 

The film also features several genuine mental patients alongside actors

 

Awards Bergen International Film Festival 2002: Jury Award - Honorable Mention

    Venice Film Festival 2002 Grand Special Jury Prize and UNICEF Award

 

 

synopsis

 

The set is a mental hospital on the border of Chechnia and Russia. There is a war somewhere near, but the psychiatric patients are living a separate life with their own values and complicated relationships. One day the medical staff vanishes and the patients can finally enjoy the freedom by turning the house upside down.  Soldiers take over the asylum twice. The insanity of war enters the life of the patients. Yuliya Visotskaya plays the leading part of a young sick woman called Zhanna who is in love with her imaginary fiancé Bryan Adams (who appears in the film a couple of times). The only way for her to survive is to love.

 

 

Click here for a trailer

 

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