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Aleksei Guerman's HARD TO BE A GOD at Anthology

ENCORE SCREENINGS!
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

Aleksei Guerman's
HARD TO BE A GOD
April 23 - 28

Anthology's premiere theatrical run of Aleksei Guerman's ultimate film, HARD TO BE A GOD, was a smashing success this past January, so we're heeding the call and bringing it back for these special encore screenings.

When Guerman died last year at the age of 74, he left behind a body of work that ranks among the most extraordinary of the last half-century, thanks to a succession of masterpieces including TRIAL ON THE ROAD (1971), MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN (1985), and the has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR! (1998). A phantasmagoric adaptation of the revered sci-fi novel by the Strugatsky brothers (authors of the source novel for Tarkosvky's STALKER), HARD TO BE A GOD began percolating in Guerman's consciousness in the mid-1960s, and would actively consume him for the last 15 years of his life.

HARD TO BE A GOD takes place on the Earth-like planet Arkanar, which is in the midst of its own Middle Ages, a period of violence, filth, and crudeness into which Guerman thrusts viewers without a net. Taking the frame-work of the Strugatskys' novel in which Don Rumata, an earth scientist sent to Arkanar purely as an observer, struggles to remain detached in the face of a brutal, oppressive society. Guerman largely jettisons such niceties as plot or psychology, preferring to immerse us in an astonishingly realized, cacophonous, and overwhelmingly sensual world. A tour-de-force of set design, mise-en-scene, choreography, and sheer sustained delirium, HARD TO BE A GOD is not for the faint of heart, yet not to be missed!

"A work of humanity, monumental beauty and even hope."
Kristin M. Jones, WALL STREET JOURNAL

"As hypnotic and as beautifully choreographed as anything in Tarkovsky or Bela Tarr."
Gabriel Winslow-Yost, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS Blog

"[M]akes Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD look like DOWNTON ABBEY."
Nic Rapold, NEW YORK TIMES

SCREENING DETAILS:
Aleksei Guerman's HARD TO BE A GOD (TRUDNO BYT BOGOM)
2013, 170 min, DCP, b&w. In Russian with English subtitles.
Adapted from the novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Distributed by Kino Lorber.
Fri, April 23 through Tues, April 28 at 5:00 & 8:30 nightly.