Sex, Coffee, Cigarettes

Eleven comedic vignettes featuring conversations – some important, some less so – held in restaurants over coffee and cigarettes (how quickly time flies – cigarettes are banned in Russia’s restaurants now). The conversations are candid, and even veer into the territory of murder. In the final credits, the director apologizes to Jim Jarmusch, whose work (in the anthology Coffee and Cigarettes, which Jarmusch shot in pieces over many years) Oldenburg-Svintsov is clearly indebted to. Sex, Coffee, Cigarettes’s kinship with Jarmusch’s film extends to the fact that superstars play tiny roles in almost all of the vignettes.

Directed by Sergey Oldenburg-Svintsov, Sex, Coffee, Cigarettes leans on a strong ensemble — Anna Chipovskaya, Anton Shagin, Agniya Ditkovskite — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about drama titles of 2014.