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A veiled chronicle of novelist Mikhail Bulgakov’s relation to a totalitarian Kremlin that banned his work, the Russian-language movie would be a satire, a paean to creative freedom, and a surrealist revenge fantasy that culminates in the burning of Moscow.

A Russian-language website based in Latvia called it “the first worthy film adaptation of Bulgakov’s novel,” with “scaldingly relevant” parallels to Putin’s Russia.

“The Master and Margarita” went unpublished for a quarter-century after Bulgakov’s death in 1940.

Pervaded by magic and mysticism, Bulgakov’s masterpiece was a far cry from the weary “socialist realism” mandated by an officially atheistic state.

With its success, producers asked Lockshin whether he had any ideas about how to bring Bulgakov’s book to the screen.