After successfully creating one of the funniest shows on television, Veep creator Armando Iannucci finally returned feature filmmaking with his In the Loop follow-up The Death of Stalin. Starring Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Palin, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Andrea Riseborough, and Jeffrey Tambor, it follows a political scramble for power after the, well, you know. Ahead of stopping by Sundance Film Festival, IFC Films have now released the full trailer.
“Armando Iannucci doesn’t make movies and TV about politics. He certainly features politicians and their endless petty squabbling and power struggles, but that’s adjacent to (though obviously entangled with) the real work of political organizing,” Dan Schindel said in our review. “Most notably, essentially all of the characters in the likes of The Thick of It, Veep, In the Loop, and now The Death of Stalin are politicians, but I honestly couldn’t tell you a single actual political belief any of them are stated to truly hold. That, of course, is a key part of Iannucci’s satire – that these conflicts are over power for its own sake and not for the betterment of anyone’s welfare, that this world is one of pure venality. Death of Stalin ramps this up to its purest form, depicting a sphere of government within which the will of the people is dismissed as irrelevant, and the stakes of political battles are not just jobs but life and death.”
See the new trailer below.
The internal political landscape of 1950’s Soviet Russia takes on darkly comic form in a new film by Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated writer/director Armando Iannucci.
In the days following Stalin’s collapse, his core team of ministers tussle for control; some want positive change in the Soviet Union, others have more sinister motives. Their one common trait? They’re all just desperately trying to remain alive.
The Death of Stalin opens on March 9.