Patient #1

Moscow at the end of the Soviet era. An old man is dying in a hospital. This man is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a regime whose final hour has come just like that of the terminally ill patient. The survival of this central political figure is of national importance. The pressure to look after the seriously ill party leader is unimaginably great for his nurse Sasha. Meanwhile, the old man is waging war against Afghanistan and could trigger a catastrophe by using a nuclear bomb.

The latest film by Georgian-born director Reza Gigineishvili is an impressive and tragicomic study of political power structures and the desperate attempt to keep a doomed state alive.