Filipp Filippovich, who specialises in rejuvenation surgery, is risking a novel experiment: he intends to operate on a dog to turn it into a human being. A street dog, as well as the organs of a recently deceased male drunkard, are to serve as test objects for the successful Moscow doctor and scientist. Together with his assistant, Bormenthal, he succeeds in transforming the dog into a human being – and Lumpi becomes Lumpikov. Delighted, the medical community sing their own praises. However, the prototype of a new future has unexpected consequences, and ultimately gets out of hand… Linguistic artist Michail Bulgakov’s 1925 novel, “Heart of a Dog,” censored due to its allegedly counterrevolutionary tendencies, is an absurdly grotesque story about a fantastical laboratory experiment that culminates in a battle between the creator and his creature – in the genre of Goethe’s “Faust” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
