The Wizard of the Kremlin

The Wizard of the Kremlin (2026) is a political drama directed by Olivier Assayas — watch online on iFILM. The French-British-American co-production stars Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, and Jeffrey Wright in a story set against the wreckage of the Soviet collapse.

Russia, the early 1990s. The state has disintegrated, fortunes are being made overnight, and a former artist turned television producer named Vadim Baranov stumbles into the role of spin doctor for a rising FSB officer named Vladimir Putin. Baranov knows how to build a persona out of raw footage and careful framing. Putin knows how to use one.

The screenplay draws from Giuliano da Empoli's novel Le mage du Kremlin, published in 2022 to wide attention across Europe. What makes the film uncomfortable is the gap between its fictional narrator and the documented record — a space where manipulation looks almost ordinary, almost logical. The tagline says it plainly: power was the plan. Stream The Wizard of the Kremlin (2026) full movie online on iFILM.