{ "id": "epmgdyqfrg", "slug": "of-freaks-and-men", "title": "Of Freaks and Men (Про уродов и людей)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.erotic-thrillers-and-dramas", "label": "Erotic thrillers and dramas", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.erotic-thrillers-and-dramas" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Eastern Europe · 1946 to 2000: Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "path": [ { "id": "geo.eeu", "label": "Eastern Europe", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu" }, { "id": "geo.eeu.t1946", "label": "Eastern Europe · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.eeu.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.eeu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Of Freaks and Men (Про уродов и людей) is Alexei Balabanov's 1998 sepia-toned Russian drama about a St Petersburg pornographer who destroys two respectable families; it premiered at Cannes Directors' Fortnight and won Nika Awards for Best Film and Director.", "snippet": "Of Freaks and Men (Про уродов и людей) is Alexei Balabanov's 1998 sepia-toned Russian drama about a St Petersburg pornographer who destroys two respectable families; it premiered at Cannes Directors' Fortnight and won Nika Awards for Best Film and Director.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.erotic-thrillers-and-dramas", "markdown": "# Of Freaks and Men (Про уродов и людей)\n\n**Of Freaks and Men** (*Про уродов и людей*, Pro urodov i lyudey) is a 1998 Russian drama film written and directed by Alexei Balabanov, set in turn-of-the-century St Petersburg, in which a pornographic photographer insinuates himself into two respectable families and destroys them.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) It runs 93 minutes, was produced by the STV Film Company, and premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at the 51st Cannes Film Festival.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) • [2](https://www.ivi.tv/watch/33504)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Director and writer | Alexei Balabanov, who also wrote the screenplay[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) |\n| Release | 1998; world premiere 20 May 1998; shown in Directors' Fortnight at the 51st Cannes Film Festival[3](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/) • [2](https://www.ivi.tv/watch/33504) |\n| Setting | St Petersburg at the turn of the twentieth century, before the revolution[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) |\n| Style | Sepia-toned monochrome with intertitles, alluding to photography around 1900 and silent film[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) |\n| Lead cast | Sergei Makovetsky (Johann), Viktor Sukhorukov (Viktor Ivanovich), Dinara Drukarova (Lisa), Anzhelika Nevolina (Ekaterina Kirillovna)[3](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/) |\n| Awards | Nika Awards 1999 for Best Film and Best Director; special prize at Kinotavr 1998; special prize at the Istanbul festival 1999[4](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/awards/) |\n| Ratings | Kinopoisk 7.1 from 94,374 votes; IMDb 6.9[3](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nThe film follows two relatively affluent families in St Petersburg at the turn of the twentieth century. The first is that of Doctor Stasov and his attractive but blind wife, Ekaterina Kirilovna; seventeen years earlier they adopted a pair of Siamese twins from Mongolia, Kolya and Tolya. The second family consists of the railway engineer Radlov and his daughter Lisa, an innocent and dreamy young woman in her twenties. Lisa hates the families' servant Grunya, who became her father's mistress after her mother died, and suspects Grunya of a secret liaison with Johann, the owner of a local photo studio.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) • [5](https://filmfestival.gr/en/tiff/films/of-freaks-and-men/)\n\nJohann, with his assistant Viktor Ivanovich, runs a respectable portraiture business as a front. In the studio's cellar he stages what the Russian synopsis calls a photographic theater of the [Marquis de Sade](https://www.edgepedia.org/marquis-de-sade), producing postcards of humiliated female nudity, including images of women being flogged with birch twigs, which he then distributes.[3](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/) • [6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/14/5) Gradually Johann worms his way into both households, and his influence coincides with the descent of one of the twins into alcoholism, the other's erotic obsession with Lisa, and Viktor's interest in Ekaterina.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) • [6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/14/5) The film catches its fictional porn industry on the cusp of the movement from still photography to rudimentary moving pictures.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/14/5)\n\n## Style\n\nThe film is shot in a heavy sepia tint with periodic silent-movie intertitles, in deliberate homage to photography around 1900 and to early cinema; the opening sequences are nearly soundless.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) • [6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/14/5) • [2](https://www.ivi.tv/watch/33504) The soundtrack uses classical Russian music by Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, and [Sergei Prokofiev](https://www.edgepedia.org/sergei-prokofiev), among others.[3](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/) Filming took place in St Petersburg, Vyborg, and [Yaroslavl](https://www.edgepedia.org/yaroslavl).[3](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/)\n\nCritics placed the film in a lineage of grotesque cinema. Peter Bradshaw, reviewing it in *The Guardian* in 2000, compared Balabanov's St Petersburg to [Arthur Schnitzler](https://www.edgepedia.org/arthur-schnitzler)'s Vienna, a world of furnished parlours and unacknowledged yearnings, and found the images reminiscent of [Diane Arbus](https://www.edgepedia.org/diane-arbus) and Joel-Peter Witkin.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/14/5) Roger Clarke in *The Independent* noted the highly artificial sepia and the near-total absence of ordinary work outside the cellar where the autochromes are made.[7](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/london-film-festival-of-freaks-and-men-1185852.html)\n\n## Origin and meaning\n\nBalabanov said the impulse for the film came in Hamburg, where, while shooting his second feature *The Castle*, he saw old erotic postcards in an erotic museum and wanted to make a film about them.[8](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/198749) In a 1998 interview with Andrei Plakhov of *Kommersant* he insisted the film contained no symbols: \"this is a love story, the most traditional love triangle, only placed in an unusual environment of pornographers, the blind, and Siamese twins.\"[8](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/198749) Asked directly who the freaks in the film were, he answered that the freaks are the Siamese twins and all the other characters are people.[9](https://filmz.ru/pub/2/160_1.htm)\n\nScholarly readings have taken the film further. Frederick H. White, a scholar of Russian culture, argued in *Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema* that the film is a postmodern commentary on post-Soviet society, using voyeurism, pornography, and perversion within a simulacrum of the Russian fin de siècle, with cultural quotations from Dostoevsky, degeneration theory, and the St Petersburg myth.[10](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/srsc.2.3.281_1) The film scholar Tony Anemone reads the sepia-toned pre-revolutionary world as strikingly similar to the post-Soviet world of Balabanov's contemporary films, one where the weak and innocent are at the mercy of the strong and unscrupulous and pornographers ply their trade without apparent concern for the police.[11](https://www.cas.miamioh.edu/havighurstcenter/papers/anemone.pdf) A Cinephile journal essay likewise argues that, although set in 1890s Russia, the film expresses economic concerns rooted in its 1990s post-Soviet context, and that the borders between freakishness and normality grow increasingly tenuous as the narrative unfolds.[12](https://cinephile.ca/archives/volume-5-no-1-far-from-hollywood-alternative-world-cinema/post-soviet-freakonomics-alexei-balabanov%E2%80%99s-dead-men-and-heritage-porn/)\n\n## Reception and awards\n\nThe film premiered at Cannes in May 1998 in the Directors' Fortnight.[2](https://www.ivi.tv/watch/33504) At home its reception was hostile: Clarke reported in November 1998 that Russian audiences reviled the film at a domestic festival and that, partly due to economic collapse, it had no Russian distribution.[7](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/london-film-festival-of-freaks-and-men-1185852.html) Russian critics condemned it, as they later condemned *Morphine*, for decadence and for relishing sado-masochistic depravity in its stylized monochrome imagery.[13](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1080576)\n\nAwards followed in 1998 and 1999. The film received a special prize at the Kinotavr festival in Sochi, the main prize of the Festival of Festivals in St Petersburg, and a special prize at the Istanbul International Film Festival in 1999. At the Nika Awards, Russia's national film prizes, it won Best Film and Best Director for Balabanov, with nominations including Best Actor for Makovetsky and Best Cinematography for Sergei Astakhov; the European Film Academy nominated Drukarova for Best Actress.[4](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/awards/) The film critic Aglaya Chechot, writing in the journal *Seans*, called it the first Balabanov film to become popular among the intelligentsia despite its strong flavor of marginality, and reported that Balabanov considered it his best work.[14](https://seance.ru/articles/pro-urodov/)\n\n## Place in Balabanov's career\n\n*Of Freaks and Men* followed the commercial success of *Brother* (1997) and marked a sharp stylistic turn.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men) Chechot identifies in it nearly the whole thematic repertoire of Balabanov's mature work: sadomasochism turned onto the idea of the homeland, the chronotope of withdrawal and mortal agony, sympathy for the freak and the outsider, and a criminal love of cinema, with the photographer Putilov here foreshadowing later camera-wielding characters.[14](https://seance.ru/articles/pro-urodov/) Some viewers and critics treat it as an unofficial prequel to *[Cargo 200](https://www.edgepedia.org/cargo-200)* (2007), reading Balabanov's post-Victorian depravity as a companion to that film's Soviet-era depravity.[3](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Of Freaks and Men, International Film Festival Rotterdam](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/of-freaks-and-men)\n2. [Фильм Про уродов и людей, ivi.tv](https://www.ivi.tv/watch/33504)\n3. [Про уродов и людей (1998), Кинопоиск](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/)\n4. [Про уродов и людей (1998) — награды, Кинопоиск](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7650/awards/)\n5. [Of Freaks and Men, Thessaloniki International Film Festival](https://filmfestival.gr/en/tiff/films/of-freaks-and-men/)\n6. [Peter Bradshaw, review of Of Freaks and Men, The Guardian, 14 April 2000](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/14/5)\n7. [Roger Clarke, London Film Festival: Of Freaks and Men, The Independent, 19 November 1998](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/london-film-festival-of-freaks-and-men-1185852.html)\n8. [Алексей Балабанов: я не собирался никого шокировать, интервью, Коммерсантъ, 22 May 1998](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/198749)\n9. [Алексей Балабанов о Войне, Уродах и Людях, filmz.ru](https://filmz.ru/pub/2/160_1.htm)\n10. [Frederick H. White, Of Freaks and Men: Aleksei Balabanov's critique of degenerate post-Soviet society, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 2:3 (2008)](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/srsc.2.3.281_1)\n11. [Tony Anemone, About Freaks and Men (1998): The Costs of not Opposing Evil](https://www.cas.miamioh.edu/havighurstcenter/papers/anemone.pdf)\n12. [Post-Soviet Freakonomics: Alexei Balabanov's Dead Men and Heritage Porn, Cinephile](https://cinephile.ca/archives/volume-5-no-1-far-from-hollywood-alternative-world-cinema/post-soviet-freakonomics-alexei-balabanov%E2%80%99s-dead-men-and-heritage-porn/)\n13. [Фильмы Алексея Балабанова: почему они вызывают столько споров, Коммерсантъ](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1080576)\n14. [Аглая Чечот, Скоро всё изменится, журнал «Сеанс», 2015](https://seance.ru/articles/pro-urodov/)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Erotic thrillers and dramas*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/of-freaks-and-men", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/of-freaks-and-men.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. 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Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Of Freaks and Men is Alexei Balabanov's 1998 sepia-toned Russian drama about a St Petersburg pornographer who destroys two respectable families; it premiered at Cannes Directors' Fortnight and won Nika Awards for Best Film and Director." }