Last year, speaking at the Venice film festival premiere of The Wizard of the Kremlin, based on a book about the rise of Vladimir Putin, actor Jude Law said he “didn’t fear any repercussions” over his portrayal of the Russian president. Law may be right, but not for the reason he thinks he is. The film aligns so closely with the mythologised version promoted by the Russian media that, domestically, it reads as a compliment rather than an affront.
The Kremlin and Russia’s pop-culture machine have long collaborated to craft a made-to-measure version of Putin that is far removed from the man himself: a political superhero without age or mistakes, a perfectly calculated strategist, a former spy reframed as a Russian James Bond who always knows more than he reveals.
