The Kidney (Seasons 1–3)

The Kidney (Pochka, 2022) is a Russian tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Maria Shulgina. Natalya Kustova, a fire-safety inspector, has turned routine inspections into a private income stream — every visit ends with a fat envelope, and her conscience stopped objecting long ago.

Designer clothes, useful contacts, a good-looking boyfriend: Natalya assumes everything has a price tag. Then doctors deliver the catch — she urgently needs a donor kidney, and by law only a blood relative can give one. Which means the brother and sister she has been fleecing for years. Three months on the clock, nobody willing to help, and the schemes she dreams up only get more outrageous.

Lyubov Aksyonova never tries to soften Kustova; the result is funny and deeply uncomfortable at once. Alongside Nikolai Fomenko and Irina Rozanova, this portrait of a swindler whose own family finally hands her the bill keeps a tricky balance between sharp satire and unexpected warmth. Stream The Kidney (2022) online on iFILM.