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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

One of my favorite movies of all time is Kin Dza Dza. It's a low budget comedy sci-fi movie with amazing ideas and a surreal aesthetic, and is quite funny and gets better with each watch. It's a subtle criticism of the soviet union in the era before its fall. You'll be saying "Kuuuu" for days after watching it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza!

Edit: just noticed a critic quoted on wikipedia called it "Mad Max meets Monty Python by way of Tarkovsky", which is a very accurate description.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYHv8eJrW2Y

This has English subtitles.

At a glance, they seem quite good, which is, in a way, hilarious. English speakers, when you see

"Without gravitsappa the pepelats can only fly like this"

it is a good translation, and you are getting the authentic Kin-Dza-Dza experience.

----

On second look, though,

"Guys, how do you roll out the pepelats without the gravitsappa? Not good."

should really be

"Guys, how do you take the pepelats out of the garage without a gravitsappa? Not good."

I'd likely translate "gravitsappa" as "gravigrabba".

One of my favorite films too! I saw it first on soviet TV, and found it amazing that all characters seems so human, naturalistic; and the world building is so organic. There are no flaws in this movie, everything just hangs together so well and effortlessly.

I second this recommendation. Kin-dza-dza! is a brilliant Soviet-era film of surreal social criticism and satire. I believe it must have had quite an influence on western film makers over the years.

i second this. i was looking for a well translated version to be able to share it with my english speaking friends, but the official translations do not seem to convey the idiosyncratic language that is used in the movie.

If the translations are losing a lot of meaning, then that just shows how great the movie is, because my native English speaking friends and I love it.

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