Tsar

Sixteenth-century Russia is in chaos. Ivan the Terrible believes he has been given a holy commission, believes he can read the signs, and sees the Last Judgment approaching. He establishes absolute power and destroys anyone in his way. During that terror his old friend Philip, head of the monastery on the Solovetsky Islands, dares to stand against the sovereign's mystical tyranny, and what follows is a collision between two entirely different views of the world. Pavel Lungin's film screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2009. Pyotr Mamonov plays Ivan and Oleg Yankovsky plays Philip, in what proved to be Yankovsky's final film. Looking at Russian history, it is also looking at the centuries that came after.