Tsar

Tsar (Царь, 2009) is a Russian historical drama directed by Pavel Lungin — available to watch online on iFILM. The year is 1565. Ivan IV rules from a state of paranoia, deploying his personal enforcement corps — the oprichniki — across the country with a mandate that answers to no law but his own.

Philip, the metropolitan of Moscow and Ivan's friend since boyhood, refuses to stay silent. Not for political advantage — he simply cannot sanction what he sees. Pyotr Mamonov plays the tsar as a man eaten by dread, which makes him far more unsettling than any straightforward monster. Oleg Yankovsky's Philip — composed, unbending — was his final screen performance before his death in May 2009.

Lungin's debut Taxi Blues took Best Director at Cannes in 1990; Tsar competed in the official selection at Cannes 2009. The film works as a 16th-century story and as something else: a parable about what a state becomes when it turns its terror inward. Stream Tsar (2009) on iFILM.