Patryk Vega, also going by Besaleel, has succeeded at the Polish box office and has now taken on the international production of the new movie Putin. The production and film are said to be an artistic protest against Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.
Besaleel is known for his gangster films such as Pitbull and Women of Mafia. Both movies combined at the Polish box office made over $100 million. However, Besaleel is about to add to his success by taking on the English-language international film.
Originally Putin was called The Vor in Law, the Russian mafia equivalent to “the godfather.” The political and psychological thriller will examine the perspective inside and outside Russia from when Putin was mayor of St. Petersburg and his connections in organized crime and politics. Private investors will fully finance the film for $12 million. Production is planned to take place next year in Malta, Poland, and Lithuania. Besaleel wants to cast a U.S. or international star to play Putin, and the rest of the cast will be from Europe. Besaleel says that Putin has yet to be well understood in America or some of Europe. He states:
I am a person stigmatized by communism, as I grew up in communist Poland. At the same time, I have been shaped by the audiovisual culture of Hollywood. For that very reason, I find myself capable of translating the intricacies of Eastern culture into the language of the West.
The first trailer concept was released, and Besaleel says he would like to take real-life people and fuse them with figures in Western and Russian art. Specifically citing work from Andrei Rublev, a medieval Russian painter, and Caravaggio, an Italian Renaissance painter. Besaleel explains, “I want the characters of saints and demons in my movie to be perfectly blended into the world of Saint Petersburg’s streets full of ragged and disheveled people with tormented Russian souls.”
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