The Russian leader Vladimir Putin he likes to show his tough side – his opponents however see him more as a cowardly monster full of worries. This is how Putin is now also presented in the film “Putin”, which is shown in German cinemas from January 9.

In the film, the head of the Kremlin is “played” by a version of Putin created with artificial intelligence. The team of the Polish director Patrick Vega has shot a horror film, where Putin’s life is presented since his violent childhood. Vega, whose works are often described by his critics as vulgar cinema, shows the Russian president, among other things, shivering half-naked and in diapers in a clinic bed, lying soiled on the floor and being cleaned by nurses.

The creators of the film were probably inspired by the speculations surrounding the state of Putin’s health. The Kremlin has, of course, repeated many times that Putin is in great health, with the Russian politician seen in the past swimming, doing judo or playing hockey. In the film, however, the protagonist is an elderly version of Putin, who is just before death.

Reality and fantasy

The film includes several events from Putin’s life, as they have become known from various biographies of the Russian president, but the creators also include many invented scenes.

A typical example is a scene in the presidential office, where Putin is seen having sex with the well-known Russian former rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, just as the president’s stunned wife, Lyudmila, enters the office. In reality, Putin’s relationship with Kabaeva was never confirmed – and the Russian president announced his separation from his wife in 2013

Scenes from a life full of violence

Viewers are immersed in Putin’s tumultuous life, including his time in the KGB, his traumatic time in Dresden and his return to his hometown of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), where he forges a career in public administration amid chaos of the 1990s alongside the mayor Anatoly Sobchak.

The film also speculates that Sobchak was assassinated before the 2000 presidential election so that he would not be a danger because of what he knew from the inside. According to the official version, Sobchak died of a heart attack. With this fact and together with the killing of Boris Yeltsin, who is presented as a beggar, the film seeks to highlight Putin’s insatiable thirst for power. The Russian president appears haunted by the ghosts of the past, as a leader who waged wars like in Chechnya and today in Ukraine primarily to maintain power.

The focus is not on the system, but always on Putin, the former head of the secret services, who even organizes house explosions to terrorize citizens. Director Vega focuses on the terror that spread during Putin’s first years in office, presenting the hostages in the Dubrovka theater (2002) and the school in Beslan (2004).

The film also portrays Russian bombings that leveled entire cities, including in Ukraine, as well as the Butsa massacre, as symbols of Russian war crimes – for which Putin still denies any responsibility.

Nothing new about Putin’s life

Given all this, the film can also be seen as an artistic protest against Putin. Russia has of course taken care not to show the film in cinemas – several media outlets have however reported its existence.

Well-known MP Leonid Slutsky described the film as another element of the “hybrid information war”, which with the help of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology seeks to distort the image of Russia and its president. The politician made it clear that he is not going to see the film and urges others to do the same. MP Andrei Lugovoi, who is suspected of involvement in the murder of Putin critic Alexander Litvienko, commented on his part that this is a film of the manipulative genre.

The film “Putin”, however, is not a film that moves exclusively in the context of absurdity and unbridled imagination – on the contrary, it is partly frighteningly close to reality. Among other things, Vega deals with the question of what happens when a man, like Putin, continues to act and dominate, without anyone being able to stop him.

And this is how we come to the big question of the modern geopolitical confrontation: whether Putin, as the head of the largest nuclear power in the world along with the USA, will finally decide at some point to turn to the extreme middle – according to the motto “after me , the chaos”.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas