A Bold Reimagining of Love and Literary Genius

Directed and written by Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert, The Idiots is a sweeping historical drama that reclaims the untold story of the woman behind one of literature’s most towering figures. Inspired by Andrew D. Kaufman’s acclaimed book The Gambler Wife, the film centres not only on Fyodor Dostoevsky, but on Anna - the courageous partner who shaped, sustained and ultimately safeguarded his legacy.

Starring Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn as Anna and “Fyedya,” the film follows the couple during a pivotal period of exile and upheaval. Travelling across Europe for their honeymoon, they settle in a German health resort, where ambition, financial instability and obsession begin to strain their fragile world. As Fyedya’s compulsive roulette habit drains their resources, he insists that risk and ruin are necessary fuel for artistic greatness - the chaos that will give birth to The Idiot, then dismissed as a commercial failure but now considered one of the greatest novels ever written.
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Yet The Idiots is ultimately Anna’s story. In the shadow of genius and addiction, she emerges not as a passive witness but as a determined architect of survival - protecting their future, managing debts and later founding her own publishing house in a society that afforded women little autonomy. Through intimate performances and a restrained, psychologically attuned lens, the film explores devotion, sacrifice and authorship itself - asking who truly shapes a masterpiece, and at what cost.