DAU. New Man

2020 | 100min

Maxim and his comrades-in-arms are participating in top-secret experiments into the creation of a new man. The employees of the secret Institute are characterised by everything Maxim detests: alcoholism, depravity, weak will, loss of ideals, and lack of faith in the future. Vika, one of the waitresses in the Institute's cafeteria, falls in love with the young communist, though she is scared by his fascination with eugenics and his violent tendencies. Vika hopes that her passion and tenderness will soften Maxim, while the state security agents keep a watchful eye on their developing relationship.

directors ILYA KHRZHANOVSKIY & ILYA PERMYAKOV | producer SERGEY ADONYEV | director of photography JüRGEN JüRGES | sound designers ROB WALKER & STEFAN SMITH & ALEX JOSEPH

“It is auteur cinema on a massive and mindbending scale.” -Sight and Sound

“The (DAU) movies… are truly an achievement. They’re intimate, hypnotic, discomfiting, sweet. And they raise uncomfortable questions about consent.” -NY Times

“New Man is grim and its message is clear: Authoritarian regimes leave no room for dissent. In stylistic terms, it’s tight, fluid, visceral filmmaking, devoid of any sentimentality, as it pulls us into the slippery desire that Vika feels for her "lost malchik," who ruthlessly conspires to murder her and her colleagues. In this sense, it’s also a film about willful blindness, misguided civility and dallying, while tragedy creeps near. To put a current spin on Dau, in our own dangerously careening times, I would add that, as an opus, it examines the fragility of reason against rogue agents.” -Ela Bittencourt, MUBI.com