Suspicious Luggage

A Soviet engineer's routine business trip to the United States morphs into a comedy of errors when his luggage becomes the center of a national security panic. The crate, marked with the name of his state-run trust 'Khimugol,' is immediately flagged by paranoid American authorities who misinterpret the Cyrillic label as a code for a devastating new explosive. As the bomb squad prepares for a catastrophe, the box actually contains nothing more dangerous than fresh oranges. While the security apparatus spirals into hysteria, the engineer remains blissfully distracted by his own secret ambition: a desperate desire to abandon the world of chemistry and coal for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. The film juxtaposes the rigid suspicions of the state against the flighty, star-struck dreams of the individual, creating a satirical portrait of two cultures talking past each other.