Viktor Erofeyev

“Berezka. Underground Capitalism ”is a documentary about currency shops in the Soviet times.

The main character is an intellectual from Russia, who sees it as his duty to bring an idiot from an mental institution to his house. He can pick someone out, after bribing the boss of the institution, with two bottles of vodka. He chooses Vova, at first sight a silly man, and takes him home. His wife is at first not very happy with this choice. Vova says and does nothing at all. Then he becomes an aggressive man, who terrorises the house and bashes everything to pieces. After she is raped by Vova, the wife gets sexually dependant on the Idiot. Vova isn't interested anymore, when she gets pregnant and doesn't keep the baby. The idiot goes now to the intellectual for his sexual needs. The wife can't take this anymore and forces her man to take a choice: Vova out, or she will go.

Sisin, a forty-year-old writer, gets on the train and goes out of town. In the car, he is surrounded by strange passengers, some of whom resemble famous Russian writers: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kuprin... Surreal visions, hidden desires, fears, and anxieties arise in Sisin's imagination. Love, career, and life itself seem stupid and meaningless to him.

As a punishment for not working hard enough, “I” is forced by the authorities to live with an idiot. He chooses Vova from a lunatic asylum. Vova is only capable of speaking a single word: “Ech”.