The Code
Directed by Eugene Kotlyarenko
Hosted by Director Eugene Kotlyarenko, Actor Peter Vack
Sales Agent
Ryan Kampe
Director
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Producer
A.J. Del Cueto, Alex Hughes, Riccardo Maddalosso, Natasha Newman-Thomas, Andy Ruse
Cast
Dasha Nekrasova, Peter Vack, Vish Velandy, Ivy Wolk
contact
Visit Films
With his latest, THE CODE, groundbreaking American indie filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko (SPREE) has succeeded where many have failed: to make a compelling and challenging pandemic film that pushes the cinematic language in new directions. Blurring different cinematic mediums and balancing multiple points of view, THE CODE follows the misadventures of a sexless couple, played by Peter Vack (ASSHOLES) and Dasha Nekrasova (THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST), as their relationship falls into shambles in the early part of the pandemic. The suffocating claustrophobia of their shared life gives way to a film that embraces surveillance and performance in a dark and edgy (un)romantic comedy. Combining the fractured attentions and identities of a heavily mediated online life with the aloof irony preventing real human connections, Kotlyarenko taps into the hungry desperation of the attention economy. THE CODE is a generation-defining wicked dark comedy that blends the post-New Wave French sensibilities of aesthetic disillusionment with a singularly alien view of contemporary American life.
Nothing is off limits in this surveillance-heavy narrative, and everything is on the table to be filmed; no experience, function, or body part is off limits. Rather than spawning honesty or intimacy, the non-stop filming only encourages greater artificiality. The film’s collage structure captures the addictive and voyeuristic quality of the endless scroll while also occasionally falling into the realm of almost Godarian abstraction. As the characters fall deeper into the pandemic, their paranoia grows more nauseating and intense, and it is increasingly unclear what’s more unreliable: the image or its makers. As we dive deeper into the fantasy image-making world, THE CODE emerges as an epic poem for the perpetually online, a collection of images, memes and transgressions that capture the vapid uncertainty of the post-pandemic era. Is there any escape from the violent fakeness of our lives? Can traditionalism save us, or is it an equally doomed project, another costume, another rejection of reality? – Justine Smith
Showings
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Teasing Master Takagi-san
Rikiya Imaizumi
A reserved teacher finds his life turned upside down by the return of an old flame who used to tease him constantly, in this touching, feelgood rom-com that restores faith in humanity.
Rats!
Maxwell Nalevansky, Carl Fry
It’s 2007, and delinquent Raphael wants to spend his summer getting to know the cool new emo girl. Instead, he gets tangled with the FBI, a suicide, Steve Irwin, and more in the year’s nastiest comedy!
FAQ
Damin Kim
A stressed-out elementary-school student secretly befriends a bottle of rice wine that can communicate through Morse Code. A heartwarming sci-fi/coming-of-age story guaranteed to make you smile.