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Davis Simanis’s period drama Marijas Klusums (Maria’s Silence) centers a real-life silent movie star in Soviet-era Russia, Maria Leiko, who thought she was untouchable when tricked into moving to Moscow in 1937, only to be murdered a year later by Stalin’s secret police.
And the Latvian film director — who is no stranger to actors — sees parallels between Leiko in Stalin’s Russia and Hollywood and foreign celebrities who became high profile friends in more recent times with Vladimir Putin, until some of them broke with the Russian leader after he invaded Ukraine two years ago.
“They know how to pretend, they know how to play characters. So if a regime gives you a role, that role sometimes becomes you in a way,” Simanis says of buddies of Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other autocrats around the world.
Maria’s Silence, which has its world premiere on Sunday at the Berlinale as part of its Forum program, captures Leiko having to choose between fame and love for her grandchild at the height of Stalin’s brutal totalitarian regime.
“With Maria (Leiko), she was given the role of a silent movie star in Russia that came from German political theater and was treated like a queen by elite Russian politicians and she played it well,” Simanis recounted.
That’s after Leiko, played by Olga Shepitskaya, got tricked into leaving behind fame in Nazi Germany to travel to Stalin’s Russia to identify her daughter in a morgue. But once there, the star of German expressionist cinema discovered her daughter died giving birth to her granddaughter.
Convinced by KGB agents to abandon her film career so she can adopt the baby in Russia, Leiko faces the artistic and personal consequences of a new life amid Stalin’s totalitarian regime. After being treated as a diva as she joins Skatuve, the Latvian State Theatre in Moscow, she comes to the attention of the NKVD.
What Leiko didn’t realize with her new role, or remained blind to, was she was being played by Stalin’s regime at the height of its murderous purges of political enemies. In 1938, she was arrested, fatally shot and buried in a mass grave as Latvians and other minorities were ruthlessly persecuted.
Simanis sees parallels between Stalinist Russia using Leiko as an ideological instrument and Russia today under Putin. He argues A-listers like U.S. action star Steven Seagal, Hollywood director Oliver Stone and French actor Gerard Depardieu became useful to an autocrat like Putin who turns famous people into what the Kremlin regards as “useful idiots” to show the world who holds power.
Simanis points to Yevgeny Mironov, a popular Russian actor and director who came out early against his country’s invasion of Ukraine. To get back in Putin’s good books, Mironov visited and performed in front of injured Russian troops in occupied Donetsk and Mariupol as part of his role as artistic director of the Theatre of Nations.
The result is A-list or lesser-known celebrities become little more than instruments of state propaganda as their creative powers diminish. “With Maria, she was at first dazed by the glamor of the Russian elites and felt flattered. Today, people like her who are used by the (Putin) regime quite well understand what they are doing,” Simanis explained.
The problem with actors, the Maria’s Silence director added, is they’re often ambitious and self-driven, otherwise they wouldn’t have a chance at success and stardom. And those qualities leave Putin’s showbiz buddies vulnerable as they befriend dictators, even if they do or don’t recognize behind-the-scenes crimes against political enemies.
“You (an actor) are so focused on your own presence in their world that you cannot or will not focus on what is happening around you. But that’s just part of the profession,” Simanis argued.
The East European director points to Putin foe Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests, only for his death in prison at age 47 to be announced on Friday. Simanis sees Navalny as the victim of politically-motivated killings in Russia today that mirror the Stalinist purges that led to Leiko’s death.
“The similarties are so strong. Alexie Navalny, because of his critique of Putin’s Russia, is such a tragic example because he was one of the few people who could have gained the power or a voice to lead some kind of a new and democratic Russia, if that could be possible,” Semanis said.