This drama from British TV documentarian Paul Pawlikowski was filmed in Russia, Poland, and the UK. Young TV news cameraman Vadik (Sergei Bodrov Jr. of Prisoner of the Mountain and The Brother) roams post-Cold War Russia shooting footage he can sell to Western news outlets. A romance gets underway when he meets British TV producer Helen (Anna Friel), and he also develops a friendship with eccentric nationalist politician Yavorsky (Vladimir Ilyin), a character patterned after Vladimir Zhirinovsky. After Vadik films an assassination attempt on Yavorsky, he learns the assassination was faked. Shown in the Directors Fortnight section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.