TIFF 2025: 'The Wizard of the Kremlin' Is Too Inert to Dissect the Power Struggles of Putin’s Regime

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Fictionalizing history can be tricky. The creative freedom that distance from reality can offer opens up a minefield of ethical quandaries, issues made all the more evident when the history in question is from our current era. Dramatising the rise of Vladimir Putin and his decimation of any potential for democracy in Russia feels risky at the best of times. One can’t blame the team behind The Wizard of the Kremlin for wanting to analyse such fraught stuff through the lens of an unreal participant. It certainly seems like a safer foundation from which to poke at a tyrant. But when history is more interesting than the person you made up, things quickly fall apar

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