Synopsis
Of Freaks and Men (Pro urodov i lyudey, 1998) is Aleksei Balabanov's drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Picture St. Petersburg at the turn of the century in faded sepia, a wheezing harmonium on the soundtrack, and a quiet dealer named Johann threading his way into two respectable households.
Johann and his assistants peddle pornographic postcards — staged photographs of bare women being flogged — and slowly smuggle the trade into comfortable bourgeois homes. Sergei Makovetsky plays him with a soft, unnerving calm, while Viktor Sukhorukov and Dinara Drukarova trace the people pulled into the photographer's orbit. Balabanov stages the corruption without a single raised voice: everything happens slowly, politely, almost ceremonially.
The film took the Nika for best picture of the year and still splits audiences clean down the middle — some call it a cold masterwork about the mechanics of vice, others can barely sit through it. This is not comfort viewing: it's harsh, glacial, eerily beautiful arthouse cinema for anyone ready to meet Balabanov beyond Brother. Stream Of Freaks and Men (1998) online on iFILM.
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