Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, and Ilham Aliyev have all been accused of horrific crimes against the citizens of the countries they rule. But where the world sees brutal dictators, filmmaker Igor Lopatonok sees opportunity.
With his small team Hollywood film director Oliver Stone, Lopatonok has already implemented several controversial projects under his belt. He has produced two documentaries on Ukraine that were widely panned as pro-Kremlin propaganda and a hagiographic eight-part mini-series on Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.
As it turns out, he had much more in store. In dozens of documents obtained by OCCRP and Vlast.kz, Lopatonok laid out plans for a series of fawning documentaries meant to burnish the reputations of the autocratic leaders of Belarus, Azerbaijan, and several other authoritarian nations. A key selling point of at least two of these pitches was the involvement of Stone, who would supposedly conduct on-camera interviews with the dictators.
It’s unclear from the documents — which include internal emails and film synopses as well as pitch brochures — whether Stone was on board with Lopatonok’s plans this time around, or even aware of most of them. None of the projects has come to fruition. Stone and his business manager did not respond to requests for comment.
Lopatonok, in an interview with OCCRP last week, said Stone was fully aware that he had proposed documentaries to several dictators, whom he referred to as “my heroes.”
You will not make any news with that. You know that, right?
Lopatonok said in response to a question about Stone’s knowledge of the pitches.
Lopatonok declined to answer specific questions on the financing of his earlier films, or how the proposed documentaries with Stone would be financed. After an increasingly combative Lopatonok threatened journalists and their sources, shouting “we’re going after you personally,” and “we’re going to destroy you,” an OCCRP editor ended the interview.
Lopatonok did not respond to a follow-up email that invited him to answer questions in writing, instead co-authoring a piece on a website he is affiliated with, Intelligencer.today, that describes him as a “victim” of OCCRP’s “hit-piece information operations.”
What does Lopatonok offer?
But the documents obtained by reporters show just how explicit Lopatonok was about the true aim of his films and how he apparently sought to pitch them to his subjects: by promising to bolster their reputations on the world stage.
One of Lopatonok’s glossy pitches — titled “Untitled Oliver Stone Documentary” and “About Ilham Aliyev and Azerbaijan” — promises that Stone would “sit face to face” with the Azerbaijani strongman and cover not only “emerging of leader to the head of state rank, but all questions of colorful and fascinating history of Azerbaijan.”
Another pitch offers to “bring the dramatic history of modern Belarus and its leader to a wide audience” at a moment when “the attention of the whole world was focused on Belarus.”
We, as the creators of the film, believe in the wisdom and consistency of Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko’s actions.
reads the pitch, which is fronted with a black-and-white montage juxtaposing Lukashenko’s face with Stone’s.
The document is undated. It is unclear which “actions” are being referred to, but in 2020, mass pro-democracy protests swept the country before being violently suppressed by President Lukashenko’s regime. It is not clear if Stone was aware of this pitch.
What was the filmmaker’s offer to Aliyev?
In his pitch to Aliyev for the “Oliver Stone documentary,” Lopatonok underscores that the planned film would “have a unique positive impact on publicity of [the] president and Azerbaijan.”
Although it’s unclear if Aliyev ever engaged with the pitch, an expert on Eurasia said it would be in line with the strongman’s previous efforts to present his regime as a dynamic, modernizing influence in the region.
I do see it as in line with all of these potential vectors of image washing — culture, sports, those are the big ones, [and] global events, global conferences,
said Alexander Cooley, a political science professor at New York’s Barnard College and an expert on Eurasian transnational networks.
Post-Soviet rulers often “really want to present themselves as contemporary, worldly modernizers,” he said. “These rulers have always had lobbyists… but what reputation-laundering does is give greater weight and plausibility to their claims about their modernizing intentions.”
The documents obtained by reporters show that his team prepared synopses of potential films about at least six other authoritarian governments, promising two of them that Stone would interview their leaders and help tell their “true story.”
Among the topics proposed for Stone’s discussion with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev were the country’s “”success” under the “dynastic rule” of the Aliyev family, and its ongoing conflict with “an Armenia that is losing its stability and teetering on the edge of an abyss.” A summary of the proposed film makes clear the tenor of Lopatonok’s approach: It describes Aliyev as a “true successor” to his father, the previous president, who had taught him to be a “wise leader.”
“Is the model of state governance chosen by Azerbaijan really so bad?” the summary asks, seeming to anticipate a measure of criticism:
Can you really call the existing state system in Azerbaijan a ‘Cult of Personality’? Or is it just a tribute of people’s respect to a leader who was able to turn the country from poverty into one of the developed, prosperous countries?
Lopatonok wrote in the pitch that the Aliyev film would cost $15 million to produce — triple what is known to have been paid for the Nazarbayev film.
How did change his plans following the invasion of Ukraine?
Emails between members of Lopatonok’s team suggest that Stone had agreed to participate in at least one of the projects, the Lukashenko film — until the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which appears to have put a stop to his involvement. (Stone publicly spoke out against the war in March that year, saying that Russia had been “wrong” to invade — although he also argued that Putin had been “baited” into the decision by the United States.)
Unfortunately, the [Belarus] project was put on pause because of Oliver’s refusal. All the attempts to find a new interviewer were unsuccessful because of the war in Ukraine (everyone that we contacted refused). I’m in a very difficult situation.
wrote producer Igor Kobzev to a crew member in June that year.
Kobzev did not respond to a request for comment.
Until that roadblock, Lopatonok seemed to have hit upon a promising formula. He had assembled a small team of screenwriters and producers who churned out film ideas to pitch to dictators, making an enticing offer: copious screen time with a world-famous director.
The key to “monetizing” the process was simple, said an insider who worked on the team, and agreed to speak with reporters on condition of anonymity. Lopatonok had figured out how to offer powerful people something they couldn’t resist: Legitimacy on the world stage.
There’s a star — Stone — who can be sold. That’s it. They’re being bought for trinkets, only the trinkets are Oliver Stone. The targets jump on it: ‘Oh, I’m with Oliver Stone! I’ll be shown all over the world!’
the insider said
This image of Stone as a ticket to worldwide fame may be several decades out of date. Once a critical darling and reliable engineer of box-office success, the Academy Award-winner has more recently been described by Variety magazine as a purveyor of “cantankerous takes.”
In a series of documentaries in the 2000 and 2010s, he provided a sympathetic platform for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez to tout their leftist political programs. In 2017, he released “The Putin Interviews,” a widely-discussed four-part series of conversations between Stone and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In late 2019, Stone and Lopatonok started working on “Qazaq: History of the Golden Man,” their documentary about Nazarbayev. OCCRP and Vlast reported in 2022 that a charitable foundation controlled by Nazarbayev paid the duo at least $5 million to produce the film.
Another synopsis, for a film focusing on Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan, offered the leader a chance to tout his defense of Turkish interests.
Kevin G. Hall, Kelly Bloss, Dan Mika, and Julia Wallace contributed reporting.
