You are here:

Three Stories

Name: Three Stories
Director: Kira Muratova
Released: 1997
Duration: 113 min

Representation Score

8.5/10

Excellent

1997

Director

Kira Muratova

Runtime

113 minutes

Average Rating

No ratings yet

New Showbiz Analysis

Kira Muratova’s film is a postmodern examination of social dissolution in a post-Soviet landscape. It replaces traditional moral arcs with a surreal exploration of human volatility and alienation. The work excels by challenging traditional gender roles and critiquing the stability of social institutions. It presents a world where family and community can be sources of dysfunction rather than support. While the film lacks overt LGBTQ+ or racial diversity, its strength lies in its rejection of traditional morality. It celebrates individual ability to act within a fragmented, decaying social contract.

Watch this, not that →

Category Breakdown

Does Three Stories have LGBTQ+ representation?

Fair

The film doesn't include explicit LGBTQ+ identities or romantic relationships. Instead, it focuses on unique interpersonal connections.

How does Three Stories portray gender?

Good

Women in the film play a significant role in driving the story through their volatile and eccentric personalities. They defy traditional patriarchal structures by seeking destructive autonomy.

How racially and ethnically diverse is Three Stories?

Fair

The cast is fairly uniform, reflecting the specific post-Soviet context. The film emphasizes socioeconomic differences over racial ones.

How does Three Stories represent religion and culture?

Excellent

The film questions traditional institutions like the family unit, showing them as sources of trauma. It prioritizes subjective, chaotic moral truths over institutional stability.

Does Three Stories include disability representation?

Fair

There is no explicit focus on physical disabilities. However, the film explores extreme emotional volatility and social isolation as inherent human conditions.

Present on Screen

Challenges traditional gender roles through strong, independent female characters.
Offers a sophisticated critique of social institutions and the family unit.
Explores complex human volatility and neurodivergent-adjacent emotional states.

Limited or Absent

Lacks explicit representation of LGBTQ+ identities or queer romantic relationships.
Maintains a relatively homogeneous cast reflective of a specific cultural setting.
Does not feature explicit depictions of physical or sensory disabilities.

Official Synopsis

A man goes to see his former schoolmate working at a boiler house and persuades him to burn in the furnace the corpse of his communal flat neighbor whom he has just murdered after a quarrel. An orphaned girl gets a job in the archives of the maternity home to find out the identity of her mother who abandoned her years earlier. She finds her, befriends her and takes the first opportunity to throw her into the sea. An old intellectual tries to explain to the neighbor’s five-year-old daughter “all the abomination of her lumpen existence”. The girl feeling hurt for her mother decides to poison the old man with arsenic.

How are these scores produced? →