Cargo 200 is a 2007 Russian psychological thriller film directed by Aleksei Balabanov depicting the end of the Soviet era. The action is set during the culmination of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1984. The movie's title refers to the code "Cargo 200" under which dead Soviet soldiers' remains were shipped home. The movie arose from a combination of different true events. It received generally positive reviews from critics.

Plot

Artyom Kazakov (Leonid Gromov), a professor of Marxist-Leninist atheism at the Leningrad State University, is visiting his brother, Colonel Mikhail Kazakov, in a small town of Nizhny Volok in the fictitious Leninsk Oblast. He meets his niece Liza's new boyfriend Valery Buadze (Leonid Bichevin), who works as a ''fartsovshchik''; Valery and Liza are going to have a party at the dacha of Liza's classmate, Anzhelika Naboyeva, who is the daughter of the district secretary of the Communist Party. After staying at Mikhail’s place, Artyom sets off to Leninsk to visit his mother. On his way to Leninsk, Artyom's car breaks down near the village of Kalyayevo, and he is forced to go to an isolated farmhouse by the road to try to get help. In the house, he meets a local moonshiner Alexey (Aleksei Serebryakov), Alexey's wife Antonina (Natalya Akimova), a Vietnamese migrant worker who goes by the name "Sunka" (Mikhail Skryabin), and a stranger who is not introduced at the time. Artyom and Alexey consume large quantities alcohol and argue about faith in God and retribution for sins, with Artyom advocating for the Marxist-Leninist atheist worldview and Alexey defending the ideas of Tommaso Campanella. Sunka, who is practically a personal slave of Alexey, fixes Artyom's car and the professor drives on. However, realizing how drunk he is, Artyom decides to go back to Nizhny Volok to spend the night at Mikhail's apartment.