Synopsis
Playing the Victim (2006) is a Russian dark comedy directed by Kirill Serebrennikov — watch it online on iFILM. The screenplay comes from a stage play by brothers Oleg and Vladimir Presnyakov, with Yuri Chursin in the lead.
Valya has a university degree and no particular ambition. He lands a peculiar side job: he works for the police as a stand-in, acting out the role of the victim in crime scene re-enactments. Every morning he's driven to a murder location while a camerawoman films the reconstruction. The verdict is already decided before anyone shows up. Among the cases he replays — a vocational school kid who got violent in a portable toilet, a bookish man who threw his wife out of a window, a hapless romantic who drowned his girlfriend in a swimming pool. Vitaliy Khayev plays the magnetic captain running these sessions; Anna Mikhalcova, Marat Basharov, and Liya Akhedzhakova fill the supporting cast.
Serebrennikov uses these grim little tableaux to examine a system built entirely for the record and for nobody's benefit. The film is funny and uncomfortable at the same time — often within the same scene. Stream Playing the Victim (2006) online on iFILM.
Starring
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