Do you want to see Mother Russia? Not the export version—bears, nesting dolls, the Bolshoi—but the Russia of Rilke, Cap d’Antibes, and truffle risotto. The country where the only thing that matters is how close you are to the czar, and everything else—people, laws, even money—is simply an instrument for getting closer. In other words, do you want to see the Russia that existed for people like me—those who worked under Vladislav Surkov, the inspiration behind the protagonist in Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin? The film, based on the novel by Giuliano da Empoli, tells the story of Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a soft-spoken intellectual with dreams of directing theater who instead becomes a spin doctor for an ambitious former K.G.B. officer named Vladimir Putin (Jude Law). Baranov is modeled primarily on Surkov, the all-powerful deputy chief of Kremlin staff, but the character also stands in for the hundreds of TV producers, spin doctors, and politicians who worked for him. Almost everything in The Wizard of the Kremlin has been re-created with remarkable precision, as if Assayas hasn’t made a theatrical film but a documentary—one that could never have been shot. —Andrew Ryvkin

To read Andrew Ryvkin’s complete review of the film, click here