When university professor David accuses the local mayor of corruption via social media, the response isn’t long in coming. David is sentenced on trumped-up charges and finds himself under house arrest. Unlike the earlier films by this outstanding Russian director, Alexey German Jr.’s first film to be shown at Cannes is a modest production characterized by an absence of visual opulence, but this approach amplifies its depiction of the given situation and allows us to delve deeper into the mind of the main character. German’s meticulously paced film can be seen as an uncompromising criticism of the political situation in Russia and as a mirror held up to the Covid era. Merab Ninidze excels in this political satire about one man’s struggle against the system and the difficulty of preserving one’s moral integrity in today’s Russia.