Putin in the clinic

AI film shows Kremlin leader Putin as a nursing case

(Bild: APA/dpa/Kinostar Filmverleih)

Polish director Patryk Vega has produced a kind of horror film as an artistic protest: With the help of AI technology, he transforms Russian President Vladimir Putin into a fictional film character that takes us through the biography of the Kremlin leader based on many true events - and shows him weak and marked in a clinic in 2026.

The result is an opulently illustrated biography that, very predictably, does not leave a good mark on Putin. Vega, whose work critics have repeatedly slammed as vulgar cinema, delights in a president who shivers half-naked in diapers in a hospital bed, then lies defiled on the floor and is washed by staff.

The filmmakers are also likely to have been inspired by the repeated speculation about Putin's state of health. The Kremlin has repeatedly emphasized that Putin is in excellent health. In real life, the Kremlin leader has appeared in the past as a swimmer or in judo or ice hockey. But in the film, an ageing Putin plays the leading role, who is close to the end.

(Bild: APA/dpa/Kinostar Filmverleih)

Many invented images
The film, which is based on many true events, relocates the present-day story of an ailing Putin and his general, played by Thomas Kretschmer ("Stalingrad"), to the year 2026. The character looks like the real 72-year-old Putin, whose life stages are then rewound as they are largely known from critical biographies.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of invented images. One example is the film scene at the presidential desk, where Putin is seen with the sports gymnast Alina Kabaeva, who is ridiculed as the most flexible woman in Russia, while his horrified wife Lyudmila enters the office. He wants to erase her from the history books as First Lady, says the Putin figure. The affair with Kabaeva was never confirmed - and Putin announced his separation together with his wife in front of the cameras during a visit to the theater in 2013.

Brutal scenes of a life
The viewer is immersed in a long life, including Putin's time as a KGB officer with a traumatic stopover in Dresden and his return to his hometown of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), where he made a career in the city administration in the chaotic and crime-ridden 1990s. Mayor Anatoly Sobchak was his political mentor at the time. The film also takes up the legend that Sobchak was murdered when Putin was already in Moscow so that his insider knowledge would not become a threat before the 2000 presidential election.

(Bild: YouTube.com (Screenshot))

The murder scene burns itself into the viewer's memory - officially Sobchak died of a heart attack. Alongside the deliberate elimination of President Boris Yeltsin, who is portrayed primarily as a drunkard, it is one of many key moments intended to illustrate Putin's unscrupulous thirst for power. We see a Putin haunted by the ghosts of the past, who uses wars such as in Chechnya and today in Ukraine primarily as a means of retaining power.

The focus is not on the apparatus, but always on Putin, the former head of the secret service, who also has explosions organized in residential buildings in order to subjugate the people of the country with fear. Director Vega concentrates on the terror that spreads under Putin in the early years. Visualized here are hostage-takings in Moscow's Dubrovka Theatre (2002) and at the school in Beslan (2004).

Cities reduced to rubble by bombing raids can also be seen - including in Ukraine. Last but not least, the massacre in the town of Butsha, not far from the capital Kiev, is remembered as a symbol of Russian war crimes. To this day, Putin denies any responsibility for this.

No new insights about Putin
The result is a picture show of the worst crimes, which viewers can also see as a form of artistically condensed protest against Putin. In Russia, with its strict approval practice for film licenses, it has been ensured that the film will not be shown in cinemas. Nevertheless, even the state media drew attention to the fact that the film exists.

Andrei Lugovoi, a member of the State Duma, said that the film was a piece of trash. The former secret service agent is suspected of being involved in the murder of Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko. He died in London in 2006 from the radiation poison polonium 210.

Film partly chillingly close to reality
"Putin. War will come" is not a completely absurd movie, but is in part chillingly close to reality. Above all, Vega also explores the question of what happens if someone like Putin is not stopped. From this perspective, nothing good can be expected.

And so, in the end, everything leads to the big question in the geopolitical confrontation of the time, whether Putin, as the head of the largest nuclear power next to the USA, will ultimately resort to the last resort - according to the motto: behind me, the deluge.