Jude Law has said he is not worried about repercussions from portraying Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas’s political drama The Wizard of the Kremlin, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday. The Bafta-winning actor described the Russian leader as ‘the man without a face’ and acknowledged the challenge of playing such an opaque figure.
Speaking at a press conference, Law said he felt confident in the hands of director Assayas and the script, and that the film was not seeking controversy for its own sake. ‘It’s a character within a much broader story. We weren’t trying to define anything about anyone,’ he added.
The film, based on Giuliano da Empoli’s bestselling novel, revolves around a spin doctor who smooths Putin’s rise to power in the 1990s. Paul Dano plays the fixer, while Law appears as Putin. Dano noted that labelling his character as simply ‘bad’ would be a ‘massive oversimplification’.
Assayas, making his English-language debut, said the film examines how modern 21st-century politics was invented, partly through Putin’s ascent. He described current geopolitical trends as ‘terrifying’ and said his generation had not found answers to the changes. Jeffrey Wright, who also stars, drew parallels with American history and warned against losing the aspiration to improve.
Elsewhere at the festival, film-maker Jim Jarmusch criticised Mubi for taking on an investor with ties to the Israeli military, calling it ‘dirty money’, though he praised the distributor’s work on his film Father Mother Sister Brother.
