Jude Law Unrecognizable in Putin for Olivier Assayas: First images

The Kremlin mage will be presented at the Venice Mostra this week.

In his new film, Olivier Assayas examined the ascent of Vladimir Putin.

The Mage du Kremlinproduced by Gaumont, makes its great world premiere this week in competition at the Venice Mostra.

The French filmmaker is not at his first tête-à-tête with sulfur figures. In the past, he has already staged characters caught in explosive geopolitical gears, whether it is the Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, alias Carlosor the Cuban spy network of Five of Miami In Cuban Network. But with The Mage du Kremlinhis very first feature film in English, Assayas crosses a new red line by delivering a nuanced portrait, sometimes tinged with black humor, by Vladimir Putin, embodied by the English actor Jude Law, almost unrecognizable on the first images.

The film retraces the ascent of the future Russian president in post-USS chaos, guided by Vadim Baranov (played by Paul Dano), a Spin Doctor Fictive inspired by Vladislav Sourkov, the man of the shadows who shaped the image of Russian power.

Adapted from Giuliano Da Empoli’s bestseller, published in 2022, by Assayas and Emmanuel Carrère, The Mage du Kremlin promises to fuel the debates in Venice – in a context where the war in Ukraine remains hot topical.

The official pitch: “Russia, early 1990s. While the Soviet Union collapsed, the country flirts between the promises of freedom and chaos. In this tense context, Vadim Baranov, a young unknown artist who has become a reality TV show producer, is gradually taking on the Spin Doctor of a promising member of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.”

On the eve of the festival, Assayas explains to Variety have designed The Mage du Kremlin not just like a “Origin Story of Putin“, but like a dive into the foundations of”Modern political world“.

“I always thought that basically, this question of evil and its ambiguity belongs to the cinema, and has always belonged to the cinema,” he says, then quoting Alfred Hitchcock, “Who said that the more the villain is successful, the better the film.”

But the nurse director: the public, according to him, is “Perhaps less accustomed to seeing political evil represented, which is not something that we show, but something we undergo. What makes this film unique, and what fascinated me is precisely that it shows the consequences, but also tries to reveal its nature. How it works, its interior cogs.”

Released in France at the cinema on January 21, 2026.