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Putin, a new political biopic being shopped to international distributors at next week’s Cannes film market, could test the waters for how much AI the film industry, and the audience, is prepared to accept.

The drama from Polish director Besaleel, also known as Patryk Vega, recreates Russian leader Vladimir Putin using artificial intelligence that was developed in-house with his own technology company Aio, creating what the director terms the “first deepfake” feature film.

German group Kinostar is handling world sales for Putin and will be shopping it to international distributors at the upcoming Cannes film market. Kinostar began sales on the film at the AFM last year and will release the film itself in several European territories.

Putin

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Besaleel said he shot scenes of the Russian leader using a Polish actor with a similar build and used AI technology to “overlay Putin’s face on the actor,...

Kinostar has dropped its first trailer for Putin, the first international production from Polish box office king Patryk Vega, who now goes by the name Besaleel. Pitched as a political thriller and psychological portrait of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the film, judging by the trailer, is unlikely to have many fans in Moscow.

Besaleel, who says he conceived the project as an artistic protest against the “Russian dictator and the war in Ukraine,” shows Putin alternatively a doddering old man shivering in soiled diapers, as a gangster-style mob boss blackmailing his predecessor Boris Yeltsin and as a cold-hearted killer ordering bombings and assassinations.

The director recreates several real-life events, including the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, in which Russian security forces pumped toxic gas into the crowded Dubrovka Theater to rescue hostages from Chechen terrorists, an action that resulted in the death of up to 130 hostages. The carpet bombing of Chechnya under Putin’s watch,...

After holding off on sanctioning Alina Kabaeva, the suspected girlfriend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, months ago, the U.S. recently amended that decision and hit the former Olympian with a sanctions package. Kabaeva had already been faced with sanctions from the United Kingdom and E.U., and a statement from the U.S. Treasury said she “has […]

The post Putin’s Rumored Girlfriend Alina Kabaeva Sanctioned By United States appeared first on uInterview.

Alina Kabaeva, an Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast rumored to be the longtime girlfriend of Vladimir Putin, was nearly the subject of sanctions by the U.S. until it was decided it would be “so personal a blow to Mr. Putin that it could further escalate tensions between Russia and the U.S.” Kabaeva, or the “Secret First […]

The post U.S. Holds Off On Sanctions Against Putin’s Rumored Girlfriend Alina Kabaeva appeared first on uInterview.