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Nazarbaev Paid $5 Million For Controversial Oliver Stone Miniseries To Whitewash Image, Investigation Finds

Kazakh ex-President Nursultan Nazarbaev paid millions for a fawning documentary about his life and career, an investigation shows. Produced by pro-Kremlin U.S. filmmaker Igor Lopatonok in 2021, it featured an interview with Nazarbaev conducted by controversial U.S. film director Oliver Stone.

The next month, the oil-rich Central Asian country saw bloody nationwide unrest, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets to protest former President Nazarbaev and what they saw as his legacy of social injustice, economic inequality, corruption, and a cult of personality. "The Kazakh film may have given Lopatonok a template for how to approach other dictators: They or people close to them would provide the funding, and he'd deliver a hagiography with high production value and a star interviewer [Stone] to boot," the journalists wrote. The 77-year-old Stone, a four-time Academy Award winner, has had his own share of controversies, including his 2017 work The Putin Interviews, which was described by The New York Times as "obsequious" and "embarrassingly generous" to the Russian leader.

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