At the opening of the 2025 Venice Festival, one of the most commented films is not a Hollywood blockbuster or an intimate author drama, but a literary adaptation full of political tension: “The Kremlin wizard “by Giuliano da Empoli, taken to the cinema by Olivier Assayas.
With Jude Law on the skin of a young Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano as his enigmatic Spin Doctor, the film proposes a fiction that moves on the border between the historical portrait and the contemporary political parable. “We did not look for the controversy for the controversy itself,” said Law in Venice, highlighting that the goal was not the cartoon or the easy effect, but a story about how power is molded in the contemporary era.
The choice of this text as a base material is not accidental. Since its publication in 2022, Da Empoli’s novel became a European success for its ability to condense the gears of Russian power in thriller, while drawing parallels with a global ecosystem increasingly marked by authoritarian leaderships and media manipulation. The translation to the cinema, in a context of war in Ukraine and growing geopolitical tensions, confirms that the political thriller lives a new boom.
Far from documentary coldness, these stories again bet on suspense, the portrait of dark halls and the figure of the strata in the shadow. In this sense, “The Kremlin wizard “ It adds to a growing list of fictions that have returned validity to the genre: from series like “House of Cards “ and “Borgen “ to recent films that recover the aesthetics of the seventy conspiracy. In times of misinformation, messianic leaders and global tensions, the political thriller is retouched as a mirror of democracies in crisis. And Venice, with Jude Law as Putin and a story that bothers as much as fascinates, marks the pulse of this trend.
Nuclear
The festival’s tune with this current was even clearer with the premiere of “A House of Dynamite “the expected return of Kathryn Bigelow to the geopolitical field. The director who portrayed the war madness in “The Hurt Locker “ And the bin Laden hunt in “Zero Dark Thirty “ He returns now with a nuclear suspense story that places the viewer in the white house halls in front of an identified author. With a cast headed by Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, the film starts from such a plausible scenario that could be confused with a press holder: the imminence of an atomic catastrophe and despair to decipher who is behind.
Bigelow defined it clearly in Venice: “I grew up at a time when hiding under a desk was the protocol to survive an atomic attack. Today the danger is greater, multiple nations have weapons capable of destroying everything in minutes. And yet there is a kind of collective numbness.”
Yeah “The Kremlin wizard “ illuminates the bowels of Russian power, “A House of Dynamite “ Examine the American reflexes under pressure, in the middle of hypersonic weapons and global tensions. Venice, then, stands in showcase of a resurgence of the political thriller where fiction dramatizes the fears of a world in permanent state of alarm.
Series
But the rebirth of the genre is not limited to the big screen or the premieres of festivals. Netflix, who in recent years found a safe niche in this field with proposals such as “The Diplomat “ either “Anatomy of a Scandal “just added a new title to its catalog: “Hostage “. The miniseries, starring Julie Delpy and Suranne Jones, staging a fictitious diplomatic confrontation between France and the United Kingdom crossed by kidnappings, blackmail and international conspiracies.
Its start, received with an 83% approval in Rotten Tomatoes, confirms that the public maintains a constant appetite due to halls, border decisions and power games where politics is confused with the thriller.
Unlike other extensive dramas of the platform, “Hostage “ Bet on an agile and compressed rhythm, five episodes that condense tension and narrative twists without unnecessary stretching. Criticism highlighted both chemistry among its protagonists and the feminist subtext that crosses the story: two women who must sustain the leadership of entire nations while facing personal pressures and global threats. With this premiere, Netflix turns “Hostage “ In one more piece of its strategy to consolidate the political thriller as a reference format.
Trump
The phenomenon, however, had been taking place since the beginning of the year with titles that dialogue directly – sometimes disturbing – with the reality of the Trump administration. There are “Zero Day “with Robert De Niro as an former president questioned in the midst of a cyber attack that paralyzes the United States, or “G20 “in which Davis violates a president kidnapped at the middle of the global summit by mercenaries seeking to manipulate the markets through Deepfakes and cryptocurrencies.
Even “Paradise “the Hulu series that imagines an underground refuge of technological elites after a climate disaster, resonated as allegory of current tensions between political power, climate change and magnates with messianic aspirations.
The coincidence between these fictions and the fluctuations of the present – from commercial wars to the nuclear threat or digital misinformation – reinforces the idea that the political thriller returned to stay.
It is no longer just about entertainment, but a genre capable of capturing collective anxiety against an unpredictable international order. Cinema and platforms, from Venice to Netflix and Prime Video, thus converge in the same diagnosis: real politics, turned into a permanent show, needs fiction to be understood.
Cracks
The list would not be complete without “Civil War “Alex Garland’s shocking film released at the beginning of 2024, which portrayed a United States fractured by internal violence and political polarization. His warlike dystopia, with journalists touring a country in civil war, was read as a parable of the crack open by Trump: a reminder that the political thriller not only points to external enemies, but also to the risk of democratic implosion from the inside.
And also without “Conclave”the other great hit of the genre in 2024 that dazzled in the Oscars. Based on Robert Harris’s novel, the film – with Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lomeli – recreated with millimeter tension the process of choice of a Pope in the midst of Vatican intrigues and geopolitical conspiracies. His success confirmed that the political thriller does not always need explosions or military clashes: the secret, manipulation and power at stake to generate the same adrenaline as an action film is enough.
Together, from “Conclave” until “The Kremlin wizard “through Bigelow, Netflix and the productions that orbit the Trumpist chaos, the panorama is clear: the political thriller has returned to the center of the cultural conversation. As Law said in Venice, “I felt confidence that this story was going to be told with intelligence and nuances.” And as Bigelow summarized: “We talked about the transformation of politics in our life. Making a film about that is talking about the present, but also of the future that stalks us.”
By rn
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