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Film review Tsar quality is not enough to save this flat political satire

The Guardian

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September 01, 2025

The Wizard of the KremlinVenice film festival ★★★★☆

- Peter Bradshaw

Film review Tsar quality is not enough to save this flat political satire

iuliano da Empoli's smash-hit satirical novel The Wizard of the Kremlin - about a Putin spin doctor called Vadim Baranov, based on the shadowy real-life Russian politician Vladislav Surkov - has now been converted into an exasperatingly laborious, literal-minded movie, burdened with endless dull voiceover.

It has been written for the screen by its estimable director Olivier Assayas, working with the formidable author and reportage journalist Emmanuel Carrère; Carrère in fact has a cameo here, as a supercilious French figure at a raucous Moscow student party in the early 90s, patronisingly informing the young people that it was the communism they've just rejected that really believed in the arts.

MEER VERHALEN VAN The Guardian

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