“This Myth Has Plagued the World for Centuries”: Maxim Pozdorovkin on His DOC NYC Closing Night Film The Conspiracy

From robot-inflicted deaths (2018’s The Truth About Killer Robots) to the rise of Donald Trump through Russian state-sponsored media (2018’s Our New President), Maxim Pozdorovkin recently has taken some unconventional routes down the darkest of rabbit holes. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the Russian-American filmmaker’s latest, The Conspiracy, closing this year’s DOC NYC, is both artistically inventive (featuring evocative animation seamlessly wed with archival imagery) and downright chilling. With a powerful score and big names such as Liev Schreiber (Trotsky) and Jason Alexander (Max Warburg) added to the mix, Pozdorovkin weaves together the interwar stories of three prominent Jewish families: the Warburg bankers headed by Max in Germany; the artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus in France; and Lev Davidovich Bronstein, a Russian Marxist revolutionary better known to the world as Leon Trotsky. The Conspiracy makes the case that in times of great upheaval, scapegoating acts like the strongest of opioids — a nonsensical balm that nevertheless can expeditiously soothe a nation’s soul. Prior to the film’s DOC NYC debut on November 17, Filmmaker reached out to Pozdorovkin (also behind 2013’s Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer and 2014’s The Notorious Mr. Bout) to find out more about this unusual history lesson, one humanity has yet to learn.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.