WHO’S IN IT?
Adrian Mcloughlin (Thunderpants), Jeffrey Tambor (The Hangover), Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs), Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace), Michael Palin (Brazil), Simon Russell Beale (Into The Woods), Paddy Considine (Dead Man’s Shoes), Andrea Riseborough (Birdman), Rupert Friend (Hitman: Agent 47), Jason Isaacs (The Patriot), Paul Whitehouse (Mortdecai), Paul Chahidi (The Libertine), Dermot Crowley (Babel), Justin Edwards (Love & Friendship), Richard Brake (Batman Begins), Jonathan Aris (The Martian), Roger Ashton-Griffiths (Mr. Turner)
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Armando Iannucci (In The Loop), director, writer; Ian Martin (The Thick of It) and David Schneider (All the Queen’s Men), writers; Nicolas Duval Adassovsky (Untouchable), Kevin Loader (The Lady in the Van), Laurent Zeitoun (Ballerina) and Yann Zenou (Heartbreaker), producers; Christopher Willis (Yellowbird), composer; Zac Nicholson (The Magic Hour), cinematographer; Peter Lambert (Now Is Good), editor
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
It’s 1953 in the Soviet Union, and ruthless dictator Joseph Stalin (Mcloughlin) has just collapsed and died. What follows is an intense power struggle between many of Stalin’s closest ministers, including Georgy Malenkov (Tambor), Nikita Khrushchev (Buscemi), and Vyacheslav Molotov (Palin), all of whom are desperate to claim power in the USSR, but more crucially to stay alive…
IN ONE SENTENCE, WHY SHOULD YOU BE EXCITED?
Armando Iannucci, the guy behind some of the sharpest political satires of the past few years, is taking things back to a controversial point in Soviet history with this darkly comic take on the power struggle following Stalin’s demise.