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Summary The film is based on a best-selling novel Soulless.
Anarchic activists plot provocative stunts and hold pitched battles with riot police in the first Russian blockbuster to show the burgeoning protest movement against Vladimir Putin.Based on a best-selling novel, the film Soulless tells a fast-moving tale about a cynical banker who gets tied up with an idealistic young protester with opposing views on business and politics.Cant you see whats happening in the country and this world, that everything is leading to a totalitarian regime? she harangues the hero.Do you really do this from conviction or is it just a PR stunt? he asks with a sneer. What has this regime done to you?The activist group clashes with helmeted and shielded riot police, throwing firebombs across barricades on a cobbled street of designer stores.But the film, which goes on general release on Thursday, is not an independent production from outside the cinema establishment.It was partly financed by the Kremlin, via the governments Cinema Fund to promote patriotic films. And its cast includes a popular actress who has since become a lawmaker, Maria Kozhevnikova, for the ruling United Russia party.The film draws explicit parallels with the radical activist art group Voina (War), one of the most controversial movements to appear in Russia in recent years and closely affiliated with the punk female rock group Pussy Riot.The activists portrayed in the film use lasers to project a giant dollar sign and obscene symbols onto a skyscraper in Moscows business district before fleeing from police.The real Voina projected a skull and crossbones onto Putins White House office with lasers in 2008, when they also painted a giant penis on a lifting bridge in Saint Petersburg outside the local security headquarters.One of the producers, the highly influential film figure Fyodor Bondarchuk, surprised many by signing an open letter urging the release of the three Pussy Riot members, before they were sentenced to two years in prison for performing in acathedral.However, the film was made last year before the group rose to prominence.
