Petrov's Flu

Petrov's Flu is a 2021 crime comedy-drama film written and directed by Kirill Serebrennikov based on Alexey Salnikov's novel The Petrovs In and Around the Flu (Petrovy v grippe i vokrug nego). In June 2021, the film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Vulcan Award for cinematography. Plot Petrov is an auto mechanic in post-Soviet Yekaterinburg. He is separated from his wife, a librarian, and together they have a son. Just before the start of the new year, his family gets sick with the flu. Then he meets a trickster named Igor who can mix the world of the living and the dead. The Petrov family begin to suffer surrealistic hallucinations and the line between reality and hallucination begins to disappear. Cast Semyon Serzin as Petrov Chulpan Khamatova as Nurlinsa Petrova, Petrov's estranged wife Vladislav Semiletkov as Petrov's son Yuri Kolokolnikov as Igor Artyukhin, Petrov's neighbor and the trickster. His initials in Russian spell out "Hades". Ivan Dorn as Sergei, Petrov's friend, and an aspiring writer Yuri Borisov as Sasha, Petrov's childhood friend Yulia Peresild as Marina, the Snow Maiden from Petrov's childhood memory Aleksandr Ilyin as Viktor Mikhailovich, Marina's brother Additional credited roles were played by Husky, Timofey Tribuntsev and Marina Kleshchyova. Production The first plans to make a film based on Salnikov's novel were announced in May 2019, with Serebrennikov helming the project. Serebrennikov wrote the screenplay for the film while under house arrest. Filming began in October 2019, took place in Moscow and Yekaterinburg and was finished in January 2020.