This evening the International Writing Program screened the 1986 Soviet science fiction film Kin-dza-dza!, which Tom Crosshill described as being iconic within the former USSR similar to the way that Star Wars is iconic in the US. It’s two hours of desolate satire set mostly on a dystopian desert planet, and like nothing else I’ve ever seen. The whole thing is available on YouTube. (Though sadly not embeddable. Hit the closed captioning button to turn on English subtitles.) According to the Wikipedia page, this year there was an animated remake, which I think I’ll have to track down.