Feature film
The Needle
Igla
Rashid Nugmanov · 1988
Synopsis
Moro returns to Alma-Ata to collect a debt from Spartak, a small-time trafficker. He moves in with Dina, his former girlfriend, and realises that she injects morphine, supplied by her employer, a surgeon whom the gang calls the Doctor. He takes her to the shore of the dried-up Aral Sea, among the rusting ships stranded in the sand, and keeps her there for the duration of her withdrawal. Then they return to the city, where nothing has changed, and Moro confronts the traffickers.
Context
The lead role is played by Viktor Tsoi, singer of the group Kino and a leading figure of Soviet rock, who also provides the music: the soundtrack mixes his songs with Soviet radio and Western rock, and the filmmaker said that Moro was Tsoi and his music. Commissioned by Kazakhfilm, written by Aleksandr Baranov and Bakhyt Kilibayev, and shot by the filmmaker's brother, the film was released in Almaty in September 1988 and drew fifteen to twenty million viewers depending on the sources. Two years after its release, a road accident killed Tsoi. In 2010, Igla Remix gave a re-edited and expanded version of it.
Who it is for
A short film, in Russian with subtitles, with discontinuous editing. Kino's original soundtrack is part of it, and one can enter the film through it.
Prizes and reception
Among the most-watched Soviet films of 1989; prize-winner at the Golden Duke festival in Odessa, it became an emblem of the “drugoye kino”, the other cinema.