The Asthenic Syndrome (Russian: Астенический синдром, romanized: Astenicheskiy sindrom) is a 1989 Soviet drama film directed by Kira Muratova.

Shot in color, the second part has its protagonist an exhausted and disillusioned school teacher Nikolai who fell asleep at the screening of the black-and-white film.

The film suggests that as a result of personal predicaments and problems at work Nikolai has gotten the Asthenic Syndrome – he falls asleep at the most inappropriate times.

This technique is one that Muratova has used in many of her films over the decades.Film scholar Jane A. Taubman sees in many "unpleasant" scenes an attempt by the directors to lead the audience out of the "moral apathy" in which Soviet society finds itself in its last years.

In her review, she concludes that the film is the most important achievement in the work of Kira Muratova, but the means and message presented by the director preclude its commercial success.

She writes, in her survey article The Cinema of Kira Muratova,[2] that ... her most important film, Asthenic Syndrome, made in 1989 and released in early 1990.

The medical syndrome from which the film takes its title is a condition of absolute physical and psychological exhaustion, a metaphor for Soviet society in its final years.

Critic Andrei Plakhov has the look of this film as "contemporary kitsch, picturesque sots-art [growing out of] the atmosphere of our towns and hamlets, and their continual construction sites: building, unfinished-building, re-building, migration of masses of humanity, the interface between village and city, the traditional neglect of public culture and the poetic cult of the romance of the road.

The critic notes in the film the presence of an "internal monologue" expressed by reading excerpts from the work written by the main character - the teacher, comparing this aspect with Federico Fellini's 8½.