'Master and Margarita,' Film Screening and Q&A with Director Michael Lockshin

Michael Lockshin filmed a new adaptation of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita in 2021, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the film was released in Russia only in January 2024. As it received praise both from critics and audiences, it was simultaneously attacked by Russia’s pro-war propagandists, who demanded prosecuting Lockshin for his anti-war views and banning the film.

The film addresses questions of censorship, truth, and the relationships of the intelligentsia and the totalitarian state, but it is also about love that makes a person, as film critic Anton Dolin says, “invisible and free.” It blends Bulgakov’s novel with his life, where Master and Bulgakov are the same character, and brings up issues that are as relevant in contemporary Russia as in the Soviet Union of the 1930s.