Generation P

Generation P (2011) is a satirical fantasy you can watch online on iFILM, adapted by Viktor Ginzburg from Victor Pelevin's cult novel. The setting is Moscow in the 1990s — kiosks, dollars, gangsters, and a country reinventing itself overnight. Babylen Tatarsky, a literature graduate with no future as a poet, is selling cigarettes from a booth when an old classmate pulls him into advertising.

He turns out to have a gift for it: writing slogans that bend Western brands to fit the Russian soul. Tatarsky climbs toward the top of the industry and slowly realizes the politicians on TV are computer renders and real power belongs to an ancient goddess, Ishtar. Vladimir Epifantsev plays a man who can no longer tell revelation from hallucination, surrounded by a wild ensemble including Mikhail Efremov, Andrei Panin and musician Sergei Shnurov.

Ginzburg spent more than a decade getting a supposedly unfilmable book onto the screen. The result is acid-bright, mean and very funny — a story about the Pepsi generation choosing Coca-Cola and a hollow center where meaning used to be. Best for viewers who love Pelevin and don't mind being the joke. Stream Generation P online on iFILM.