Down House (Russian: Даун Хаус, romanizedDaun khaus) is a 2001 Russian comedy-gross-out film by Roman Kachanov, a modern interpretation of the 1869 novel The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky.[1][2]

Down House
Film poster
RussianДаун Хаус
Directed byRoman Kachanov
Written byRoman Kachanov
Ivan Okhlobystin
StarringFyodor Bondarchuk
Juozas Budraitis
Ivan Okhlobystin
Stanislav Duzhnikov
Aleksei Panin
Mikhail Petrovsky
Mikhail Vladimirov
Jerzy Stuhr
Barbara Brylska
Artemy Troitsky
Elena Kondulainen
Aleksandr Bashirov
Olga Budina
Release date
  • 18 May 2001 (2001-05-18)
Running time
89 minutes
CountryRussia
LanguageRussian

The film received the Special Jury Prize at Kinotavr.[3]

Premise

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The plot is set in modern Moscow, probably in the second half of the 1990s, with "New Russians", Hummer H1 jeeps, bribery, violence, truckfuls of tinned stew as a dowry, and so on. The film is quite far from the novel's subject, but still keeps to the main storyline. It features Fyodor Bondarchuk as Myshkin, and a soundtrack by DJ Groove, one of the most popular Russian DJs (who appears in the film as a taxi driver).

In Russian, Даун (Down) primarily refers to a person with Down syndrome, or, colloquially, to anyone retarded or just stupid, so it is similar to Idiot; while Хаус (House) refers to House music, which is used extensively in the film. The name is also a reference to the tendency of Russian subcultures such as businessmen, hackers and hippies to make heavy use of words borrowed from English and transliterated into the Russian alphabet.

Cast

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References

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  1. ^ Lidia Maslova. ""Даун-хаус" Романа Качанова по сценарию Ивана Охлобыстина обещает стать самым скандальным российским фильмом года". Kommersant.
  2. ^ Larisa Yusipova. ""Идиот" для дембельского альбома". Vedomosti.
  3. ^ "Winners 1991-2005". Kinotavr. Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
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