Tripping with Zhirinovsky

Two years after his portrait of Radovan Karadzic in SERBIAN EPICS, Pawel Pawlikowski again portrayed a very controversial politician, the ultra-nationalist Russian Vladimir Zhirinovsky. He is followed during a boat trip on the Volga with two hundred adherents, and during a visit to New York, where he draws a lot of media attention. ‘To American standards, I am a success’, Zhirinovsky says. ‘In five years time, I have risen from the masses to the top, from an income of 200 roubles a month to 200 million.’ In the editing process, Pawlikowski has chosen for scenes that make people laugh. Still, the spectator stays behind with a nagging feeling. Is Zhirinovsky really a dangerous idiot or a plain populist? According to the director, he must be seen as an evil genius of post-modern politics: one day advocating the introduction of free trade, the next a confirmed chauvinist.