Director: Michael Lockshin
Set in Stalin-era Moscow, this 2024 Russian fantasy drama follows a persecuted novelist whose forbidden manuscript summons a devil who settles scores on his behalf.
What is The Master and Margarita about?
A celebrated writer sees his play shut down and his book barred from publication by a literary establishment terrified of its satire. Humiliated and cornered, he starts drafting a second manuscript, one where a mysterious, devil-like stranger arrives in the capital and turns the machinery of censorship against itself. His lover and fiercest advocate refuses to let the pages die in a drawer, pressing him to keep going even as the line between the story he is telling and the city closing in around him starts to dissolve. Reality and fiction trade places scene by scene, with ballrooms, secret police, and a black cat sliding into and out of the writer's waking life.
Cast & crew
Yevgeni Tsyganov anchors the film as the tormented author, with Yuliya Snigir as the muse who refuses to let his voice be silenced. August Diehl brings an unsettling calm to the stranger unraveling the city's polite cruelties, alongside Yuri Kolokolnikov, Leonid Yarmolnik, and Aleksandr Yatsenko in supporting turns.
Context & significance
Director Michael Lockshin adapts Mikhail Bulgakov's banned Soviet-era novel, a book that itself was suppressed for decades before publication and only reached readers long after its author's death. The production leans into lavish period design, splitting its visual language between grim 1930s realism and the fantastical excess of the writer's imagined revenge, with production design and costuming built to make the shift between the two worlds feel instant and disorienting rather than clearly signposted for the audience.
Where & how to watch
The film streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, presented in a Farsi-language interface built for the Iranian diaspora. A free K-Time account and login are all that's needed to watch; the page itself is open to read without signing in.