Said one way, the Russian word “Durakovo” designates a place, a town’s name. Said with a slightly different emphasis, the word refers to fools. A pair of young men debate the nuances of pronunciation that determine the word’s meaning as they lazily shovel detritus onto a fire in the opening sequence of Nino Kirtadze’s Durakovo: Village of Fools. Shot handheld, the camera circling the men, the scene reads as the opening to a humorous yet biting satire, something from Beckett, perhaps.

That tone continues as we meet Mikhail Morozov, the leader of Durakovo, a small town south of Moscow that rejects democracy in favor of strict adherence to the rules determined by Morozov alone. He lumbers into his swimming pool like a giant bear, takes calls on his cell phone, and towels off his meaty arms and chest while downing bites of breakfast and shouting orders to the skinny workmen laboring around the edges of the pool. Gradually it becomes clear that, despite the irony, this film is a documentary portrait, not a narrative, and that within this world democracy is not an ideal worth fighting for but a problem best solved with authoritarian rule.

The town and its implications for Russia as a whole intrigued Kirtadze, who was born in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and has worked as a university professor, journalist, and actress. “The story was like a microcosm of Russian society,” she said, “and at the same time a kind of tale of what the authoritarian régime could be like.”

Some of the inhabitants of Durakovo opt to live there, arriving with the hope that Morozov will help them transform their lives through an almost ascetic regimen of labor, spiritual resolve, and political divestiture. Others are delivered by disgruntled parents who hope Morozov will instill proper respect and submissiveness, the antidote to too much democracy. Once there, inhabitants live with a degree of fear that Morozov will deem them unruly or somehow problematic. “It was like living in the time of Stalin in the 30s,” said Kirtadze about living in Durakovo during the shoot. “We did not know what was going to happen from day to day and who might have been denounced by the boss for some wrong move.”

Morozov is strangely compelling in part because he seems to so completely lack the charisma or brilliance that one might think would appeal to willing subjects. Instead, Morozov is big, threatening, and resolutely simple in his logic regarding the rationale for his leadership. When asked if she ever felt any desire to cede her own independence and join Morozov as an inhabitant of Durakovo, Kirtadze demurred. “But the main impact for the film came after I spent a month living in Morozov’s castle,” she said. “When I got to know his character and the inmates and also when I understood what kind of connections Morozov has among Russian politicians, or the Orthodox Church, I knew I wanted to make this film.” She added, “It was stunning to see from such a close distance the desire for total power and the fascination for it.”

What Kirtadze’s portrait suggests ultimately is not so much the need for a perfect leader for authoritarian rule to take hold, but an array of conditions that make an opening for someone – brilliant or not – to step in and lead. Building on that idea, Kirtadze said, “I remember when one of the inhabitants, who was educated, well read, and intelligent, very calmly told me, ‘All our history is about living under an iron hand, it’s what we are used to. When people say that we need a Stalin in Russia, they are quite right. Democracy is not for us. We don’t need it here.’”

Durakovo lets viewers ponder that point themselves. Kirtadze avoids polemics, instead letting us witness Morozov’s influence, as well as the power of systemic fear as it transforms initially rebellious visitors into compliant subjects. For Kirtadze, Morozov’s power also affected her production. While she had total access during the shoot, she was very well aware of the risks of working with someone with absolute power. “The biggest challenge for me was to keep the right distance and not to go insane during the shoot,” she admitted. “It’s a bit difficult to explain, but he could end the shoot whenever he wanted. So I had to be very attentive,” she said. “It was a very difficult experience but it was worth it.”