Hotel Tubu (2002) is a good introduction to the Buharov’s cinema. A relatively early work, its slapstick playfulness and improvised fancy dress party aesthetic might at first suggest a wilful exercise in absurdity for its own sake. Yet this is tempered by a rather wistful lyricism, which combines with the haunting elusiveness that accompanies the first viewing of many Buharov films, an unease not dissimilar to trying to recall a dream that only presents itself in fragments. This stems largely from trying to process the complex layers of impressions that it offers within a very condensed running time. It shows the struggle between three “cosmos workers,” beings whose task is to wait for ideas too big to be conceived by human brains to be channelled from the universe.

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