So blistering a critique of authoritarianism is Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita that it’s hard to imagine how Vladimir Putin’s Russia could ever have approved a new film adaption. The Soviet-era cult classic, written in the 1930s, exposes the disingenuity of the communist regime by mocking its culture of censorship, bureaucracy, and persecution. Bulgakov brandishes interwoven narratives, fantastical characters, and absurdist flourishes to underscore that truth and memory can persevere even in the face of heavy-handed oppression.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Russian American filmmaker Michael Lockshin’s adaptation kicked up an unholy shitstorm in the land of Bulgakov’s native language. The production—which cost a reported $17 million, making it one of the country’s most expensive movies ever made—was filmed mostly in Russia in 2021 and financed in part by the state-run Cinema Fund. Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the domestic clampdown that followed threw its funding and release into limbo, postponing its Russian debut to January 2024.

So blistering a critique of authoritarianism is Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita that it’s hard to imagine how Vladimir Putin’s Russia could ever have approved a new film adaption. The Soviet-era cult classic, written in the 1930s, exposes the disingenuity of the communist regime by mocking its culture of censorship, bureaucracy, and persecution. Bulgakov brandishes interwoven narratives, fantastical characters, and absurdist flourishes to underscore that truth and memory can persevere even in the face of heavy-handed oppression.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Russian American filmmaker Michael Lockshin’s adaptation kicked up an unholy shitstorm in the land of Bulgakov’s native language. The production—which cost a reported $17 million, making it one of the country’s most expensive movies ever made—was filmed mostly in Russia in 2021 and financed in part by the state-run Cinema Fund. Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the domestic clampdown that followed threw its funding and release into limbo, postponing its Russian debut to January 2024.

Despite threadbare promotion—perhaps a belated attempt to stuff the genie back into the bottle—the two-and-a-half-hour production, once released, captured Russians’ fascination; became one of the country’s largest-ever box office smashes; and won of six awards from the Russian Guild of Film Critics, including best feature film. It’s more than likely that the independent critics and over 5 million Russians who bought tickets understood the production exactly as Bulgakov intended: a defiant slap to regimes that curtail rights, terrorize literati, and murder dissidents.

As Lockshin, who has publicly criticized Russia’s assault on Ukraine, put it, the story in a nutshell asks: “How do you remain free as a writer in the face of censorship?” The question is as relevant to Lockshin and his Russian colleagues today as it was to Bulgakov’s generation.

The Master and Margarita follows the story of the Master and his lover, Margarita, played by Evgeniy Tsyganov and Yulia Snigir, amid political turmoil in Soviet Russia.Mars Media

The film’s circuitous journey befits that of the novel that inspired it. The book Bulgakov wrote between 1928 and 1940 had no chance of publication in his lifetime, as Bulgakov’s anti-communist politics put him in constant conflict with the authorities. Although, bizarrely, Joseph Stalin

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