Screening of Target (2010), directed by Alexander Zeldovich, script by Vladimir Sorokin

Speaker(s): Discussants: Alexander Zeldovich, Vladimir Sorokin, Gregory Freidin (Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford), Tom Luddy (Co-Director, Telluride Film Festival)

A boldly conceived dystopian epic, Target is set in Russia in 2020 - a nation now massively influenced by China, but still divided between the poor and the outrageously wealthy. Viktor (Sukhanov) and Zoya (Waddell) are members of the gilded elite, and seekers after eternal youth - available at a price at an abandoned astrophysics facility bombarded with cosmic rays. Vast in conception, Target is at once an audacious exercise in futurology, a philosophical contemplation of the human condition, and a satirical vision of the oligarchs' Russia of today. All this is wrapped up in stylishly conceived and often spectacular imagery, with some bold motorway action thrown into the mix. Co-written by cult novelist Vladimir Sorokin (The Ice Trilogy), Target belongs in the great Russian philosophical science-fiction tradition of writers like Zamyatin and the Strugatsky brothers - not to mention of Tarkovsky. But its confidence and elegant production values also carry echoes of Minority Report, The Matrix and even Fellini. Right up to its apocalyptic finale, Target has to be seen to be believed - visionary cinema at its most playful and provocative.

- Jonathan Romney, London Film Festival