HEART OF A DOG screening at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

Vladimir Bortko | 1988 | USSR | 2h16m | Presented in the original Russian audio with English subtitles

HEART OF A DOG is one of the great literary adaptations to come out of the late Soviet period. The premise is already perfect satire: a celebrated Moscow professor takes in a stray dog, performs an experimental operation, and creates not a refined new man but a vulgar social catastrophe. The film is based on Bulgakov’s novella, which was written in 1925, banned from official Soviet publication for decades, then officially published in the USSR in 1987 before Bortko’s adaptation aired in 1988.

What makes HEART OF A DOG so strong for me is that it doesn’t play like dusty canonical literature. Sharikov isn’t just a comic monster. He’s a walking disaster born out of social engineering, bureaucratic stupidity and the fantasy that human nature can be remade by force - all through no fault of his own. This version is also famous for never straying too far from Bulgakov’s text, and that matters here, because the satire is so exact. The professor’s apartment, the housing politics, the manners, the slogans, the resentments, all of it builds a vision of early Soviet life that’s absurd on the surface and brutal underneath.

WHY I’VE INCLUDED IT IN THIS WEEK’S PROGRAM;: I wanted this program to include films that expose the madness of systems that claim to improve human life while producing something uglier, pettier and more destructive. HEART OF A DOG does that brilliantly. It belongs here alongside BLUE MOUNTAINS and KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR! as another film from this part of the world that understands how power, ideology and official stupidity can deform everyday life. It’s savage, very funny, and far more politically loaded than its premise first suggests. For me, that mix of intelligence, satire and total confidence is exactly what makes it essential FOMO cinema.

LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.

HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter Bazari Orbeliani via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left to the first floor. You can also check our Instagram story highlights for a video showing exactly how to find us:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17933106294029235/