The first official trailer for Olivier Assayas‘ The Wizard of the Kremlin has been released, and more of Jude Law‘s uncanny transformation into Russian leader Vladimir Putin is revealed.
The political drama charts the rise of Putin into a global player with the help of scheming spin doctor Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano playing a character based on Vladislav Surkov, widely considered the “grey cardinal” of Russian politics). The trailer depicts Baranov convincing Putin of his cynical approach to geopolitics, with the goal being to “sow chaos” and “build the myth that the Russians and controlling the modern world.”
Though much of the talk about the film before its release has been about Law’s depiction of a younger Putin, including a rather spot-on wig, the film is actually more about Dano’s character, as the trailer shows.
The film also stars Alicia Vikander, Will Keen, Tom Sturridge and Jeffrey Wright. Assayas directs the film from a script he co-wrote with Emmanuel Carrère, which is based on the book of the same name by Giuliano da Empoli.
The Wizard of the Kremlin premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, where it was warmly received. Writing after the film’s debut in Venice, The Hollywood Reporter‘s critic was a little more cautious about the film in their review. “Assayas’ movie coasts swiftly along, from the fall of the U.S.S.R in the late 1980s to the 2014 invasion of Crimea, with the director applying a fluid, unfussy style as he leaps between offices, hotels, mansions, forests, and streets in Moscow, London and other capitals,” they wrote. “But things tend to get muddled whenever he slows down and tries to create real drama or memorable characters, at which point The Wizard of the Kremlin feels clunky and expository, as if the actors were reciting lines from the totalitarian’s playbook.”
Vertical acquired the North American rights to The Wizard of the Kremlin and plans to release the film in theaters on May 15.
