The war changed everything, but Lockshin has remained outspoken. Lockshin said that at the time they thought: “This was a way of where Russia could go, if things don’t change … But on the other hand, it wasn’t like we knew what’s going to happen in two years, and that we would actually reach the level of Stalin’s purges in 2024 that we have reached today.” We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. skip past newsletter promotionĮnter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. Lockshin and the screenwriter Roman Kantor had developed the screenplay years earlier. The film was shot in 2021 and was going into post-production before Putin launched his invasion in Ukraine. The Kremlin has jailed anti-war artists but it has also punished some of its own “loyal” pop stars after Soviet-style denunciations for a display of decadence: attending a “nearly naked” party at a Moscow club before new year.Īfter soldiers complained to Putin about video from the party, attenders issued teary apologies on Instagram (which has also been banned) or appeared in the occupied territories of east Ukraine serenading soldiers as way to exculpate their guilt.Īs far-right propagandists were looking for another scalp, the Master and Margarita came out on the big screen. His first feature film, Silver Skates, a period adventure film set in fin-de-siecle St Petersburg, premiered in 2020 and was acquired by Netflix the following year.Īrt is under the microscope in Russia. Lockshin is an American-Russian film-maker who was born in the US and moved to the Soviet Union in 1986. “The people who were going after me and the propagandists how much they were cosplaying characters from the movie.” “I was just marvelling at the irony of it all, because it was kind of copying what happened to the book and Bulgakov in his time,” Lockshin said. And those events recalled the life of Bulgakov himself, whose novel was published decades after his death. “There was real discussion about that.”Īs this drama played out, the themes of Stalinist censorship in the film played out in real time in modern-day Russia. “For a week, we didn’t even know if they would ban the movie,” he said. Instead, Lockshin, the actors and the producers ended up in a political firestorm that reached the State Duma and national television. That artistic licence could be seen as blasphemy: the novel is Russia’s most popular of the 20th century and has never found a worthy film adaptation. To tie the stories together, Lockshin has the Master write the novel Master and Margarita, adding a meta-narrative not included in Bulgakov’s original. His biggest concern had been how audiences would react to his artistic treatment of Bulgakov’s classic, which contains three stories: Pontius Pilate’s trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus of Nazareth) in Jerusalem, the devil Woland’s arrival in Moscow with his entourage and the story of the Master and his lover Margarita. It was both scary to watch and felt like I wasn’t in control any more … like the movie was having a life of its own.” “I’ve always been kind of the guy behind the camera, I’ve never liked a lot of attention to myself. Lockshin said it was “very unpleasant” and that the anger focused at him had been disconcerting. Russian tabloids have published details of where he lives (luckily often wrong) and he has received death threats. He has been attacked by Margarita Simonyan, the head of the state-controlled broadcaster RT, and Vladimir Solovyov, one of the most popular pro-Kremlin talkshow hosts. Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels have demanded Lockshin be investigated for discrediting the Russian army and called him a terrorist. Because this is a moment in Russia where censorship is rife, and the film is dedicated against censorship and doesn’t obey that censorship is inspiring to audiences.” “We know that when someone makes a film now, he is writing or making a film about now,” said Dolin. The reason was simple: an army of online trolls and pro-Kremlin pundits wanted him arrested and did not like his anti-war views, or the film’s excoriation of totalitarianism, or that some of its estimated $17m (£13m) budget – one of Russia’s largest film budgets ever – came from the state-backed Russian Cinema Fund. “It was a very hard journey getting there since the war started,” he said.įor weeks after its release, Lockshin had mostly avoided the press. Michael Lockshin, the director, said it was “a miracle” the film came out, on a call from Los Angeles where he lives.
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