The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said The Death of Stalin was the film of the year and gave it five stars.
In Britain, early reviews of Armando Iannucci’s dark satire on the aftermath of Joseph Stalin’s death have been glowing.
The relentless focus on this has led to popular anger that the Kremlin itself sometimes finds hard to control.
The pro-Kremlin newspaper Vzglyad recommended the film should not be screened in Russia, calling it “a nasty sendup by outsiders who know nothing of our history”.