Cargo 200

The 2007 Russian thriller directed by Aleksei Balabanov presents a grim portrayal of provincial life in the USSR in 1984, against the backdrop of the Afghan war and the decline of the Soviet era. The plot unfolds in the fictional towns of Nizhny Volok and Leninsk, as well as in the village of Kalyaevo and Leningrad. Artem Kazakov (Leonid Gromov), a professor of scientific atheism, travels from Leningrad to Leninsk to visit his mother and stops by his brother Mikhail (Yuri Stepanov), the military commissar of Nizhny Volok. During the visit, he meets Valera Buadze (Leonid Bichevin), a black marketeer and the boyfriend of his niece Lisa (Agnia Kuznetsova). Valera persuades Lisa to go to a disco, but after being refused, he goes alone and meets Angelika Naboyeva (Agnia Kuznetsova), the daughter of the district party committee secretary and Lisa's friend. Meanwhile, Artem's car breaks down near Kalyaevo, and he seeks help at the homestead of moonshiner Alexei Belov (Aleksei Serebryakov), previously convicted of murder. At Belov's house, Artem engages in a philosophical debate about God, defending atheistic views, while Belov dreams of creating a "City of the Sun" on his land. During this time, Valera brings Angelika to the homestead for moonshine, but after getting drunk, loses consciousness. Belov, showing explicit intentions towards the girl, faces resistance from his wife Antonina (Natalya Akimenko), who hides Angelika from her husband. However, police captain Zhurov (Aleksei Poluyan), known for his brutality, discovers the girl, kills Belov's Vietnamese worker Xuan Van He (Mikhail Skryabin), and rapes Angelika with a vodka bottle, depriving her of her virginity. Zhurov then kidnaps the girl and holds her in his apartment, handcuffed to a bed, under the watch of his alcoholic mother (Valentina Andryukova). Meanwhile, "Cargo 200" arrives in Nizhny Volok — zinc coffins with the bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, among them Senior Sergeant Nikolai Gorbunov, Angelika's fiancé. Zhurov brings the coffin with Nikolai's body to his home, opens it, and places the corpse next to the sleeping Angelika, informing her of the "arrival of her fiancé." Waking up to see her dead lover, the girl falls into hysteria. Zhurov continues to torment her, reading Nikolai's letters and observing her suffering. In the finale, Antonina, seeking revenge for her husband's death, kills Zhurov but leaves Angelika handcuffed to the bed surrounded by corpses, symbolizing the hopelessness and moral decay of society at that time.