THE DEATH OF STALIN

1953 seems like any other year during Stalin’s mandate: confident (but not overly so) of his power, he continues to order the murder or deportation of dissidents, to suppress freedom of expression and to make sure the circle of people revolving around him toes the line. One morning, when he is found lying on the floor, his coterie panics… And obviously, the race to become his successor begins. Who will win out over the others: Khrushchev, who is more like a Mafioso than a politician; the loose cannon Molotov; mild-mannered Zhukov; or evil Beria? 

“When we were researching it, we found out things like Vasily, Stalin’s son, really did lose the ice-hockey team in a plane crash. And because the comedy is the comedy of hysteria, you want to be true to what happened and how people responded. So anything that was so-bizarre-and-yet-true was a candidate for going in. I thought about having ‘This is a true story…,’ but then I thought, no, just watch it for what it is, and it would be great if you subsequently found out that the bulk of it was true.”

regia/director
Armando Iannucci
soggetto/story
dall’omonima/same title graphic novel di/by Fabien Nury, Thierry Robin
sceneggiatura/screenplay
Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin
fotografia/cinematography
Zac Nicholson
montaggio/film editing
Peter Lambert
scenografia/production design
Cristina Casali
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Steve Buscemi (Nikita Chruščёv), Simon Russell Beale (Lavrentij Berija), Jason Isaacs (Georgij Žukov), Olga Kurylenko (Marija Yudina), Adrian McLoughlin (Iosif Stalin), Andrea Riseborough (Svetlana Stalin), Rupert Friend (Vasilij Stalin), Jeffrey Tambor (Georgij Malenkov), Paddy Considine (compagno/comrade Andreev), Richard Brake (Tarasov), Michael Palin (Vjačeslav Molotov)
produttori/producers
Laurent Zeitoun, Yann Zenou, Nicolas Duval Adassovsky, Kevin Loader produzione/production
Quad Productions, Main Journey, Gaumont