Limonov: The Ballad

Limonov: The Ballad traces the life of Eduard Limonov, a Soviet-born poet and provocateur whose path carried him from Moscow to New York, Paris and eventually the Russian political scene. He appears in many guises: underground writer, butler to a wealthy Manhattan household, dandy, agitator and would-be revolutionary. Out of these shifting identities he built a public persona and a body of writing centered on his own self-image, while the wider story moves through the second half of the twentieth century.

Kirill Serebrennikov directed the film, working from a screenplay he wrote with Paweł Pawlikowski and Ben Hopkins. It is based on Emmanuel Carrère's novel about Limonov, and it stands in the director's filmography between Tchaikovsky's Wife and The Disappearance of Josef Mengele. Ben Whishaw plays the leading role, with Viktoriya Miroshnichenko, Masha Mashkova, Tomas Arana, Corrado Invernizzi and Evgeny Mironov among the cast.

Produced across Spain, Italy and France on a budget of about 11 million dollars, the film runs 133 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.8 from roughly 1,400 votes, and on TMDB 6.4 from around 84 votes. A critics' rating of 6.2 from 27 reviews places it slightly above the larger IMDb audience sample, while TMDB users rate it a little higher still.