Russia: Strategic developments in Moscow
The autumn of 2026 for Russian streaming services looks as if all the showrunners opened their parents' bookshelf and discovered the Strugatsky brothers there. Wink is showing "Hard to Be a God", "Poludenn" is released on Okko and KION, and "Hotel "At the Fallen Climber"" is coming up. "Poludenn" is inspired by the novella "The Beetle in the Ant Hill" and, like "Hard to Be a God", it экранизирует the conflict of civilizations ("progressive" versus "catch-up"), colonization, and the theme of doing good, embedded in the Strugatsky books. But in the first two episodes of the project, the creators are only polishing the beauty. Film critic Oleg Tundra has endured the second serial action based on Soviet science fiction writers in a month and comes to the conclusion: the formula "Strugatsky + Russian movie stars + borrowed visuals" is a gold mine for pseudo-philosophical television product.In 2278 (that is, 250 years later), a space civilization speaks Russian. The center of the world is in Moscow, among the students of the main university – a mixture of Slavic faces and alien freaks. Universal prosperity has come thanks to the Progressors – scientists and philanthropists who integrate into societies on other planets, disguising themselves as locals, and move culture in the right direction – wisdom, non-violence, technology, and equality. The only ones with whom the Progressors have not yet been able to establish contact are the mysterious tribe of Wanderers, who, apparently, have magical abilities.The action of "Poludenn" revolves around several characters. Former prodigy, and now exiled researcher Lev Abalkin (Maxim Matveev) has not returned to Earth once in 20 years, despite making two dozen demands to his superiors. It is known about Lev Abalkin that during his last assignment on the planet Nadezhda, he brutally killed his commander. In Earth, they receive information that he has nevertheless arrived home illegally and are trying to track him down. The most high-ranking officials and scientists are involved in the search: the wise, irrefutable elder Sikorski (Leonid Yarmolnik) and his son Max Kammerer (Yuri Kolokolnikov), who is unsuccessfully trying to rest from work on a sandy beach with his wife in a silver swimsuit. The only person with whom Abalkin once had a warm relationship is his classmate and, apparently, his first love Maya (Yulia Snigir), who became a scientist. Kammerer goes to her first...Photo from the filming of the series. Source: MediaslovoThe question of what the ideal future of humanity looks like has tormented utopians since Plato. Thomas More sent people to an island, Campanella built the City of the Sun, Le Corbusier proposed rethinking cities as if architecture did not exist before. The Russian "Poludenn" gives its answer: the ideal future is a future that an affluent urban dweller of our time can imagine on a good day off. In the ideal future, humanity lives in the center of the world in Moscow, in the Gorky Park area. Moscow of 2278 makes a touching impression of a city that has survived several wars, climate crises, and artificial intelligence crises, contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations – and yet did not decide to move the benches near "Muzeon". The "Best Public Project of Moscow" competition is still won by the Wowhaus bureau, and KB Strelka is responsible for the visual part. And if you want a reboot from this благолепие in a country house, you can go to relax in Osinki on Lake Valdai.Usually, science fiction tries to overwhelm with the scale of the future: Kubrick's monolith hangs over everything, Lucas's cities spread across entire planets, Villeneuve's man is powerless before the landscape, Ridley Scott's corridors look as if humanity built them at the cost of thousands of engineers' lives. The utopia of "Poludenn" is completely devoid of artistic audacity. The Russian viewer is invited to recognize the future not through wonder, but through real estate. A character can investigate a superintelligence conspiracy against the backdrop of a place where just a year ago they sold a raft for 400 rubles. There is an almost religious faith in this by Russian production: if you plant enough trees, put a concrete bench, and remove outdoor advertising, communism will come immediately.The costumes also clearly show how modern Russia imagines an era of prosperity: "We have started to dress better." In cinematic science fiction, the costume of the future usually reveals the fears and fetishes of the era that invented it. In the sixties, the future was dressed in plastic because plastic was a miracle. In the seventies, everyone was squeezed into synthetics and overalls, as space was seen as an extension of industry. In "Blade Runner", the future turned out to be both noir and Asian, because the 80s feared corporations and the Asian economic miracle. In "The Matrix", humanity entered the new century in latex, capes, and tiny glasses, because the late 90s sincerely considered hackers the new aristocracy.The future of "Poludenn" is much calmer: it wears COS. How to show the viewer a world where people really live better than us, if you can't demonstrate spaceships every minute? Very simple: no one wears mass-market down jackets anymore. The people of "Poludenn" look as if they are about to come up to your table in three minutes and ask if you want onigiri. Black, white, graphite, spacious silhouettes, stand-up collars, vests, kimonos: the future has arrived somewhere between minimalist restaurants where it's impossible to get a table without a reservation. Why, in the Strugatsky society, which was supposed to free man from a huge number of social codes, does everyone look so proper? Where are the eccentrics? Where is the person who, in 2278, decided to wear a jabot? Where is the crazy fashion of a three-hundred-year-old civilization that has survived dozens of aesthetic revolutions? Where is at least one man in a dress made of glowing algae? No, humanity has conquered the galaxy and reached a consensus that good taste is free black trousers. "Poludenn" has another feature of a modern high-profile TV premiere: it seems that the actors were given scripts for different works before filming.Yuri Kolokolnikov enters the frame with the expression of a man who has already been told the main news, and it has moderately amused him. Maxim Matveev carries such a burden of destiny that you want to offer him a wheeled cart. Yulia Snigir, playing the only important female character, still exists in the register of Margarita from the recent pompous adaptation of Bulgakov. Leonid Yarmolnik plays the main mega-boss in any situation. The anti-ensemble of actors in "Poludenn" is simultaneously annoying and entertaining: some scenes resemble a meeting of several theater schools that rented one house together and only later found out that they had arrived for different festivals. Director Klim Kozinsky, who graduated ten years ago from the late Boris Yuhanov's directing workshop, after several serial projects, was given superstars, but did not at all tune their organic nature.It might seem that the authors are obsessed with visual quotes and plagiarism, but the fact is that, as in "Hard to Be a God" a month ago, the controversial world of the Strugatskys is again castrated to a detective line and a fashion show. "The Beetle in the Ant Hill" is a rather unpleasant source for such a transformation. The literary world of Poludenn did not need a collection of spectacular alien physiognomies, armor, and hermetic dresses to seem fantastic. Its main special effect was a new human type. Not a ship, not a teleporter, and not a humanoid with an extra pair of eyelids, but a society where many reasons for acting like a pig have disappeared. The Strugatskys invented a future out of the conviction that a person is capable of becoming better. One can argue with the structure of the world of Poludenn, find paternalism in it, faith in an enlightened elite and historical progress, but the scale of ethical fantasy itself is amazing: "Let's imagine a society where education is the main resource, work has meaning, people don't fight for oil, and the universe is arranged by the smartest and most worthy. How long will such justice last?"Photo from the filming of the series. Source: MediaslovoThe Russian series looks at this dream like an archaeologist at a perfectly preserved vase. You can recreate the form, but how to portray on screen the very faith that all this will someday become possible? How to convey the sincere interest of the writers in human nature with today's news and the cynical context of the Russian film factory? That's why "Poludenn" hangs so strangely between 3D models of a cozy city and an advertisement for an expensive wellness hotel: the material shell of the future is much more accessible than the political and ethical imagination of the Strugatskys.For an expensive TV launch in Russia at the end of 2026, science fiction as a genre has a wonderful property: you can discuss power, intervention, fear, security, the right of the state to dispose of human destiny, the intellectual elite, and the moral justification of violence, and then innocently present that the action actually takes place in 2278 and it's about some fictional Wanderers. The Strugatskys are ideal for the double life of the mainstream in a reactionary country.They can be beautifully reissued, adapted, repackaged according to new visual trends, relatively keeping their face: we are releasing a humanistic message to the screen.But if you open the book, you find that inside there are nasty questions about the present day: does an enlightened person have the right to decide the fate of others, can one kill to prevent a hypothetical catastrophe, and what to do at all if the one who considers himself progressive sincerely believes he is right. There are great doubts that anyone from the huge project team seriously discussed these questions while preparing "Poludenn".
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