Karen Shaknazarov was regarded at the time of Gorod Zero as a young, but established Russian director with several fairly traditional lyrical comedies to his name. Gorod Zero was therefore a surprise to friend and foe. He did not comply with accepted narrative structures and displayed a special freedom and imagination in this reflection on political and aesthetic reality. Unlike his colleagues, who used the new freedom to tackle subjects that had been taboo in Soviet history, he described the ‘shadows from the past’ and present-day characters a little ironically as two items that exist simultaneously in time and space and are largely dependent on each other.The Moscow engineer Varakin comes to an insignificant little town, where he ends up in a maelstrom of events that transcend all common sense.
