Kin-dza-dza! (1986)

Кин-дза-дза!

A Moscow builder and a Georgian student are teleported to a desert planet where everything depends on matches and saying 'Koo!'.

⚠ NO OFFICIAL ENGLISH SUBTITLES — MACHINE TRANSLATION ONLY

Mosfilm has not added English subtitles to this film. You can still follow it with YouTube automatic translation: start the video, click ⚙ Settings → Subtitles/CC → Auto-translate → English.

Please note: this translation is made by a machine in real time, not by us or by Mosfilm. It is often clumsy and sometimes wrong. We list this film because it is too famous to leave out. All films without this warning have proper, human-made English subtitles.

Plays from Mosfilm's official YouTube channel. Turn on Auto-translate as shown above; use the CC and ⚙ buttons in the player to change them. Open on YouTube ↗

Year
1986
Director
Georgiy Danelia
Starring
Stanislav Lyubshin, Levan Gabriadze, Yevgeny Leonov, Yuri Yakovlev
Genre
Comedy, Fantasy, Adventure
Running time
2 h 07 min
Language
Russian · no official English subtitles (YouTube machine translation only)
Studio
Mosfilm

About the film

Uncle Vova, a foreman, goes out to buy bread and meets a strange man asking for the number of his planet. A Georgian violin student presses a button on the stranger's device, and both are sent to the planet Pluke in the galaxy Kin-dza-dza.

Pluke is a rusty desert where people speak with one word, 'Koo', a match is a fortune and social rank depends on the colour of your trousers. The two Earthmen team up with two shabby locals to find a way home.

Strange, very funny and surprisingly sad, it is a cult science-fiction satire, Danelia's most unusual film.

Did you know?

  • The word 'Koo!' and the ritual squat greeting became famous across the former USSR.
  • The music is by Giya Kancheli.
  • Danelia later remade the story as an animated film in 2013.

If you liked Kin-dza-dza!