Directed by Kira Muratova • 1997 • Russia, Ukraine
Starring Sergey Makovetskiy, Renata Litvinova, Oleg Tabakov

In Kira Muratova’s darkly ironic triptych, three seemingly unlikely people are driven to murder—shocking acts of violence rendered by the director as a kind of monstrous comedy of the absurd. A mild-mannered clerk’s annoyance with his troublesome neighbor reaches the breaking point, a misanthropic hospital worker channels her anger at her mother into a startling act of revenge, and a sweetly innocent-seeming young girl turns out to be capable of the most heinous of crimes. Working in her famously abstract style, Muratova uses these grimly farcical tales to explore the inherent irrationality of human nature.