Overpaintings and scratchings in scenes from the Russian science fiction film “Silver Heads” by Yevgeniy Yufit. Considering that this work is already an outrageous deconstruction of the old Soviet pathos of the inevitable victory of scientific and technical progress, “Stakes” must be regarded as its drug-fuelled exaggeration into the unsurpassable.

In the spring of 2022, security guards in Moscow are tense. Under the guise of a film competition on the architecture of the city, Yana Osman and Anton Khamchishkin are permitted, if nothing else, to film the battlements of the Kremlin wall. But how to speak of the attack when you have to say “special military operation”? How to create pictures of resistance when filming any protest is forbidden? By pondering swallows and mathematical catastrophe theory, for example.

Oh, if only the cat could get up the enthusiasm to do what’s natural for her species, namely, to catch mice! But this cat is good for nothing, just lies around languidly, too lazy to even lift a paw. The clever mouse invests more energy. It’s true she doesn’t show herself, but she manages to make everything revolve around her, even to make human and cat leave the house …