One of the key films of the Perestroika era, Zero City tells the story of a Moscow engineer named Varakin who arrives in a small town with instructions to change the size of a locally manufactured air-conditioner part. At the company office he is welcomed by a naked secretary and then finds himself sitting down to a lunch where dessert is a cake that strongly resembles his own head, baked by a chef who soon shoots himself. With its images of a burdensome past and an indeterminate future based on both folk tales and more modern forms of absurdism, Shakhnazarov's very funny and poignant film is a true historical touchstone.