The Vanished Empire

In The Vanished Empire, Karen Shakhnazarov, a prolific and under-recognized Russian filmmaker with a surrealist touch, views the collapse of the Soviet Union as an inevitable conflation of the younger generations natural impulse to reject the past for the seductive power of popular culture that can seep through even the most rigidly patrolled borders. The movie doesn't strain for symbolism, but you might view Sergey, wonderfully played by Alexander Lyapin, as the embodiment of a young generation of Russians recklessly barging into an unforeseeable future. He is the ringleader of a group of three close friends, including Kostya (Ivan Kupreyenko), the bass player in a local rock band and the earnest, geeky Stepan (Yegor Baranovsky), who share the usual excruciating post adolescent rites of passage.
(Karen Shakhnazarov, 2008, Russia, 105 min)