Egghead Republic

Even in an alternate timeline where the Cold War burned hot enough for an atomic bomb to fall on Soviet Kazakhstan, there persists a familiar constant: the unpaid internship. For Sonja Schmidt (Ella Rae Rappaport), it is thanks to this “exposure” economy that she is persuaded by hipper-than-thou culture mogul Dino Davis (Tyler Labine) to accompany a gonzo journalistic expedition to a joint Soviet/American military base that monitors a Kazak radioactive zone — one rumoured to be rife with irradiated centaurs(!).

As with their debut feature Aniara (TIFF ’18), filmmakers Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja audaciously adapt a literary work of science fiction. Here, they concoct a wickedly acidic satire by dovetailing the post-nuclear wasteland worldbuilding of Arno Schmidt’s 1957 novel The Egghead Republic with Kågerman’s personal experience working for Vice at the height of the media company’s influence and infamy. These two inspirations are further synthesized via such meta-dimensional touches as positing the fictional Sonja as Schmidt’s great-niece and letting Labine cut loose with a performance that channels an all-too-recognizable counterculture impresario from our universe.

It’s when these two foils defy their military escorts and venture deeper into “the zone” in search of mutant fauna that things truly come off the rails. Kågerman and Lilja foster a funny and freaky dreamlike tension as their film teeters between a surrealist farce and an incisive critique of the media-industrial complex.