The Assassin Of The Tsar Blu-ray presents Karen Shakhnazarov’s haunting 1991 psychological drama, a labyrinthine meditation on madness, guilt, and history itself. Blending Cold War paranoia with metaphysical time travel, the film unfolds as a chilling inquiry into how the mind can fracture reality — and how the past refuses to stay buried.
 
Malcolm McDowell delivers one of his most compelling later-career performances as Timofeyev, a schizophrenic patient confined to a bleak Soviet psychiatric hospital who believes he is responsible for the assassinations of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 and Tsar Nicholas II in 1918. Determined to cure him, the compassionate Dr. Smirnov finds himself drawn ever deeper into Timofeyev’s delusions, until history itself begins to warp and collapse, pulling doctor and patient alike into the tragic corridors of imperial Russia.
 
Filmed simultaneously in two distinct versions on separate 35mm negatives, The Assassin Of The Tsar exists as both an English-language cut featuring McDowell’s voice and an alternate Russian-language version with a different edit and score. Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films present both versions in a new restoration, offering a rare opportunity to experience Shakhnazarov’s film as a dual meditation on memory, identity, and historical trauma.
 
directed by: karen shakhnazarov
starring: malcolm mcdowell, oleg yankovskiy, armen dzhigarkhanyan
1991 / 104 min