The film's writer Margarita Simonyan is editor-in-chief of Russian state news outlet Russia Today/Rossiya Segondnya and is a close friend of Vladimir Putin. The film's director Tigran Keosayan is Simonyan's husband who hosts a satirical but staunchly pro-Putin show on Gazprom owned channel NTV. Both were sanctioned by the European Union in 2022 for their support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and being a "central part of Russian government propaganda".