Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998) review

Endless snow and suffering in the Soviet Union: little Aleksei (Mikhail Dementev) lives with his father General Yuri Georgievich Klensky (Yuri Tsurilo), a Jewish doctor "in charge of a major clinic," who's prone to excessive drinking (and keeps a lady on the side), but the General is eventually arrested, raped in the back of a truck, and then somehow winds up at the dacha of none other than Joseph Stalin (Ali Misirov), who's dying.  German (who only directed six features) has a distinctive "style," with his ultra-high contrast black and white cinematography and characters walking into and out of frame seemingly at random with no explanation as to who they are or why they're there, but that approach becomes alienating almost immediately as it's never clear what's happening, and the movie's inhabitants just cough, spit and breathe in each other's faces at a very close distance.  This emphasis on the grotesque does the movie a wild disservice and instead of focusing on the notorious and deeply anti-Semitic "doctors' plot" - in which Jewish medical officers were falsely accused of attempting to assassinate "party officials" - it emphasizes the decrepit conditions and seeming "randomness of life" (although that might be enough for some viewers).  In a surprise "twist" of sorts, it does allow Klensky a "happy ending" ... the rest of the downtrodden populace - as well as Stalin's vile secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria (Mulid Makoev) - not so much.