Morphine

Morphine (Морфий, 2008) is a Russian drama from director Alexei Balabanov you can watch online on iFILM. Adapted from Mikhail Bulgakov's semi-autobiographical stories, the film is set in autumn 1917, as revolution tears the country apart — and a young doctor named Polyakov, played by Leonid Bichevin, arrives by sleigh at a remote district hospital and finds himself alone against everything.

Botched deliveries, field amputations, burns. One night, to dull the pain after a brutal surgery, he injects himself with morphine. One dose turns into a habit he refuses to name. Ingeborga Dapkunaite plays the nurse who watches him unravel without being able to stop it.

Balabanov shot the film in near-monochrome tones, stripping away any romanticism of the period. This isn't a cautionary tale about weakness — it's a precise, uncomfortable study of how a trained, rational mind can lose the argument with its own body. Stream Morphine online on iFILM.