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Tverdovsky's second feature—his first, Corrections Class (2014), dealt with disabled students—displays the director's early background in documentary filmmaking with shaky, attentive camerawork that adds voyeuristic appeal to the film and electrifies the visual of the ultimately disappointing last scene.

Tverdovsky's film isn't the densest subtextual work imaginable: The tail is one unending McGuffin, and Natasha's coworkers are so comically unkind that the film approaches pastiche despite loose, whip-panning camerawork. Still, Zoology is aided immensely by Pavlenkova and strikes a balance of bonhomie and nihilism.

Zoology is now on its way to TIFF, fresh off its victories at the local Kinotavr and Karlovy Vary (Special Jury Prize), and later bound for San Sebastian, which makes yet another strong case for how generously and indiscriminately festival recognition is lavished upon sensationalist exploitation. Let's go back to the tail for a minute, though. Its existence is both the movie's sole raison d'être and the only drop of fuel in its narrative tank.

It's a startling parable about the perils of being different in contemporary Russia. The protagonist is a middle-aged zoo accountant living with her pious mother in a small seaside town. One day she grows a long tail and that mysterious appendage ultimately turns her dreary life upside down. While some of it is grotesque, it is also difficult to stop thinking about.