The Kopeck

The Kopeck (2002) — watch online on iFILM — is a Russian comedy by Ivan Dykhovichny where the lead character is not a person but a car: the VAZ-2101, the "Kopeika," the first Soviet-era Lada to reach mass production.

The car passes through hands. It belongs to a Politburo member's family, then a sex worker, a card shark on the Black Sea coast, a KGB clerk, a pensioner-turned-hustler, and a dissident physicist from Novosibirsk's Akademgorodok. Each owner is a separate short story. The cast spans Andrei Krasko, Roman Madyanov, Alyona Babenko, and Sergei Shnurov of the Leningrad band.

Dykhovichny uses the car as a fixed reference point while everything around it shifts beyond recognition — from late Brezhnev stagnation through the nineties' chaos. Dry, not nostalgic. Watch The Kopeck (2002) online on iFILM.