When Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn't star in his biopic, Polish director Patrick Vega turned to artificial intelligence.
The groundbreaking film, whose trailer opens with the leader writhing on the floor in diapers, uses a deepfake of the ruler's face transplanted onto the body of a real actor.
"To get extremely close to the dictator, we needed Putin, not an actor with make-up," Vega told AFP at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was selling the film to buyers.
"I called Putin and asked him if he wanted to be in my film... No, it was a joke."
Vega - a 47-year-old director who has made several hit Polish films - used artificial intelligence to generate only the face, as he did not have enough high-resolution images to do a full-body deepfake.
The results are bizarre.
The producers of the film, called simply "Putin," say it has already sold out in 50 countries ahead of its September release.
The film follows the ruler's life over six decades from the age of 10, when he was seen being beaten by his stepfather.
"I show his death at the end. A happy ending," Vega says.
The original idea came to Vega in the early days of the Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine in 2022.
"First I wanted to make a film about the Russian mafia. Then I decided to make it about the biggest mastermind," he says.
He shook off any fears of reprisals.
"Putin must be afraid of me," he said.
Once he developed the technology, he wanted to share it with others, saying filmmakers could send him footage and he could add crowds, actors and many other elements.
Such ideas are a huge source of concern in Hollywood, where artificial intelligence threatens to destroy many jobs, especially among special effects technicians and extras.
It was a key issue of a months-long strike by actors and writers last year that ended in a hard-fought agreement with the studios that included promises to pay actors if their AI-generated images were used.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, however, many studios are already using AI extensively - for example, to age down actors like Harrison Ford in the latest "Indiana Jones" - but are afraid to talk openly about it. /BGNES
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