“Maria’s Silence” director talks about actors being friends with tyrants – The Hollywood Reporter

Maria was silent

Kristaps Dzinis

Davis Simanis’s historical drama Mariejas Clausoms (Maria’s Silence) is about a real silent film star in Soviet-era Russia, Maria Leko, who thought she was untouchable when she was tricked into moving to Moscow in 1937, but was murdered a year later. Stalin’s hand. Undercover cop.

The Latvian film director – who is no stranger to actors – sees similarities between Leko in Stalin’s Russia, Hollywood and foreign celebrities who have recently become prominent friends with Vladimir Putin, until some of them broke with the Russian leader after his invasion. Ukraine two years ago.

“They know how to pretend, they know how to play characters. If a system gives you a role, sometimes that role becomes you in a way,” Simanis says of Putin’s friends, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and other autocrats around the world.

Maria’s silence, Which will have its world premiere on Sunday at the Berlinale as part of its Forum programme, depicts Leko having to choose between fame and love for her grandson at the height of Stalin’s brutal totalitarian regime.

“With Maria (Leko), I got the role of a silent movie star in Russia who came from the German political theater and was treated like a queen by the Russian political elite and she played the role well,” Simanis recounted.

This is after Leko, played by Olga Shepetskaya, is tricked into leaving behind fame in Nazi Germany to travel to Stalin’s Russia to identify her daughter in the morgue. But once there, the German Expressionist film star discovered that her daughter had died giving birth to her granddaughter.

After KGB agents convince her to give up her film career so she can adopt the child in Russia, Leko faces the artistic and personal consequences of a new life amid Stalin’s totalitarian regime. After being treated as a singer when she joined Skatuve, the Latvian State Theater in Moscow, she came to the attention of the NKVD.

What Leko did not realize in her new role, or remained blind to, was that Stalin’s regime was playing her part at the height of the murderous purges of her political enemies. In 1938, she was arrested, shot to death and buried in a mass grave where Latvians and other minorities were mercilessly persecuted.

Simanis sees similarities between Stalin’s Russia, which uses Leko as an ideological tool, and today’s Russia under Putin. He says celebrities such as American action star Steven Seagal, Hollywood director Oliver Stone and French actor Gerard Depardieu have become useful to an autocrat like Putin, who turns celebrities into what the Kremlin considers “useful idiots” to show the world who has power.

Simanis refers to Yevgeny Mironov, the famous Russian actor and director who came out early against his country’s invasion of Ukraine. And to get back into Putin’s good books, Mironov visited and performed for wounded Russian troops in occupied Donetsk and Mariupol as part of his role as artistic director of the Theater of Nations.

The result is that lesser-known celebrities become little more than tools for government propaganda as their creativity wanes. “With Maria, she was initially in awe of the charm of the Russian elites and flattered. People like her who are used by the (Putin) regime understand very well what they are doing,” Simanis explained.

The problem with the actors, Maria was silent The director added that they are often ambitious and self-driven, otherwise they would have no chance of success and stardom. These qualities make Putin’s showbiz associates vulnerable when they befriend dictators, even if they may or may not acknowledge behind-the-scenes crimes against political enemies.

“You (an actor) are so focused on being in their world that you can’t or don’t want to focus on what’s happening around you. But that’s just part of the profession,” says Simanis.

The Eastern Europe director refers to Putin’s opponent Alexei Navalny, who campaigned against official corruption and organized massive anti-Kremlin protests, only to be announced dead in prison at the age of 47 on Friday. Simanis sees Navalny as a victim of politically motivated killings in Russia today that mirror the Stalinist purges that led to Leko’s death.

“The similarities are very strong. Alexei Navalny, because of his criticism of Putin’s Russia, is a tragic example because he was one of the few people who could have gained the power or the voice to lead some kind of new, democratic Russia, if that were possible,” Simanis said.