A puppet candidate who learns to pull his own strings — Russian politics has never been this dirty.
In the upcoming elections in the non-existent Kuibyshev region, businessman Andrei Obolensky, at the suggestion of the country's leading political strategist, becomes the spoiler candidate of the current governor Koretsky. The spoiler's task is to pull votes from Morozov's main competitor and withdraw from the election in favor of Koretsky. But the further the game goes, the more Obolensky gets into the taste. It is no longer clear who is playing against whom, and most importantly, what is at stake for everyone.
Acting
Maksim Matveev's transformation from pawn to player
Writing
Every handshake hides a knife
Direction
Tight framing that traps you in rooms with bad men
Creators
Sergey Minaev, Andrey Tsibulsky
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The 'Kuibyshev region' name deliberately evokes Soviet-era political machinery, a ghost geography where democracy goes to die.
Director Minaev previously covered real Russian elections as a journalist; the 'spoiler' tactic shown was deployed in actual 1990s campaigns.
RU
