Coma

Who needs the Marvel Cinematic Universe when you’ve got the Russian Cinematic Universe? COMA is the heavy artillery of Slavic science fiction, creating a visually stunning world that’ll blow your mind and not only yours, those of coma patients as well… Victor (Rinal Mukhametov, an actor you’ll also see in INVASION and ABIGAIL, both part of the Russian universe at this year’s BIFFF) is an architect who’s struggling to get his projects off the ground. But one morning the whole world seems to go off the ground, spiraling into the most bizarre angles and with a skewed sense of geography: Moscow suddenly sports a Big Ben diagonally sticking out of the Kremlin, Venetian gondolas float next to the Red Square, people walk upside down on a bridge that shoots out into the sky… One gigantic spider web of half-forgotten memories: his own and those of the other people that are trapped in this universe. Sounds a bit like Facebook Horizon and its grand ambitions of creating virtual worlds where our minds can wander freely, disconnected from our real-world minds and bodies. And that’s what makes COMA extra impressive: it’s a reflection on Silicon Valley’s wet dreams of transhumanism, but it’s packaged as a super fun mash-up of INCEPTION, THE MATRIX and PAPRIKA. And that, friends, is how you recognize truly great sci-fi.