Dead Mountaineer's Hotel

Written by the Strugatsky Brothers (who also created Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker), this icy genre-bending ‘70s Eastern European whodunit with a superb minimalist electronic score has been a long-standing cult classic waiting to happen. When Inspector Glebsky arrives at a remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in police work. He's there to ski, drink brandy and loaf around. But he hadn’t counted on the other vacationers: an eccentric bunch including a famous hypnotist, a terrorist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky androgynous teen and the mysterious glammed-up Mr. and Mrs. Moses. The strange, poetic rhythm of Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is best absorbed on the big screen, with a throng of equally entranced audience at your side. (Grigori Kromanov, Estonia, 1979, 84 min.) In Estonian with English subtitles