This article reviews several films from the Venice Film Festival, covering a range of genres and topics.

**The Wizard of the Kremlin (Olivier Assayas, 2025)**

Assayas's latest film explores the relationship between ideology and culture in the post-Soviet era, particularly through the character of Vadim Baranov, a Putin loyalist. The film is cerebral and invested in the mechanisms of power, self-delusion, and vanity, with a chilling portrayal of Baranov's psychological tunnel vision.

**The Smashing Machine (Kathryn Bigelow, 2025)**

Bigelow's A House of Dynamite is a big-screen entertainment that follows the events leading up to a nuclear warhead hurtling towards the United States. The film takes place in multiple perspectives and features assured editing from David Fincher regular Kirk Baxter.

**A House of Dynamite**

Although Bigelow brings out an engrossing, well-directed, big-screen entertainment, its impact has faded since returning from Venice. A comparison is made to two recent films - Alex Garland's Civil War (2024) and Ari Aster's Eddington (2025), both of which also avoid naming political parties even as they're muddily in dialogue with America under Trump.

**The Wizard of the Kremlin**

Assayas's The Wizard of the Kremlin stands at a remove from the regime's atrocities; the film's project, like any Assayas movie, is cerebral and invested in the mechanisms of power, self-delusion, and vanity. The way the film comes to inhabit Baranov's psychopathic tunnel vision—fortified by his appropriation of political struggle, abstraction of suffering, and abdication of responsibility—is chilling.

**Writing Life: Annie Ernaux through the Eyes of High School Students (Claire Simon, 2025)**

The documentary features a striking breadth of works by Annie Ernaux that spark class discussion. The film travels to several French high schools to listen in on class discussions and finds that even when students are skeptical, Ernaux is a figure with whom they can dialogue, one dedicated to relating her experiences in sharp and plain language.

**The Wizard of the Kremlin**

Assayas's movies tend to pit art against capitalism in a changing world; Here, he’s disturbed by the way that this tension ceases to meaningfully exist, tracing the blackpilled co-optation of punk and literature by autocrats and oligarchs.