Vasily Pichul, a Soviet reform-era director who, in the 1988 film “Little Vera,” captured international attention with his comically scorching portrait of a teenage girl navigating a grim society that was then adjusting uneasily to social and political change, died on Sunday in Moscow. He was 54.

The Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation confirmed his death. Russian news agencies said the cause was lung cancer.

Mr. Pichul was only 28 when “Little Vera,” written by his wife, Mariya Khmelik, was released. Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, said it heralded the arrival of “a pair of first-rate new filmmakers who will soon be internationally known.”

The movie’s unforgiving takedown of Soviet monotony, futility, amorality, industrial obsolescence and pollution shocked Soviet audiences who had been weaned on officially sanctioned films and were still acclimating themselves to the Communist leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s efforts to create a more open Soviet society — socially, politically and economically — under his policies of glasnost and perestroika.