Produced for the German television network, the documentary analyses the role of the cinema in constructing Stalin’s personality cult. At the same time the film reconstructs “comrade Stalin’s” interest in and ideas for the cinema. Against a background of tracks from Stalin films, the documentary recreates the period of Stalin’s dominance through many interviews with Kremlin functionaries, script writers, film critics and historians and witnesses. It offers new insights into Soviet cinema of the period and raises some important points for the interpretation of this central period in Soviet (and not only Soviet) cinema history.