Synopsis

When the kind-hearted plumber Dima Nikitin is sent to repair the burst water pipes of a nine-storey building, he soon discovers that the whole housing complex is in acute danger of collapsing. In order to arrange for evacuation of the 800 residents, he visits the mayor at her birthday party. However, she does not take the bad news well, and Nikitin soon finds himself up against a thick wall of absurd bureaucracy. Writer-director Yuri Bykov contrasts poverty, unemployment and alcoholism with the decadence of a rotten upper class, creating a genre picture that is dismal in more than just its colours. In this feature, corruption is deeply embedded in the society and everybody's primary interest is to save her or his own hide. The human lives at stake appear to be only secondary. Bykov's narrative style is both thrilling and clever and uncovers the mechanisms of a system in which honest and unselfish people like Nikitin have become a rarity. The Fool had its premiere in 2014 in Locarno where it also received an award. “A distressing moral drama, gripping thriller and scathing sociopolitical portrait of Russia rolled into one” (The Hollywood Reporter)

Guests

Yury Bykov

Yury Bykov  
Director, writer, actor, composer, editor The Fool, The Mayor, To Live 
In Vienna: October 1-7