In the novel
The Master and Margarita by the Russian author
Mikhail Bulgakov, on which the film is based, three story lines are interwoven: a satirical story line in which
Satan, called Woland here, goes to the city of
Moscow in the 1930s to deal with the corrupt lucky ones, bureaucrats and profiteers from the
Stalin era; a second one describing the internal struggle fought by
Pontius Pilate before, during and after the conviction and execution of
Yeshua Ha Nozri (Jesus from Nazareth); and a third telling the story of the love between the master, an unnamed writer in Moscow during the 1930s and his beloved Margarita, who goes to the extreme to save her master. The master has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, and is addressed by the authorities because this was an issue which in the officially atheistic
Soviet Union was taboo.{{cite news The film
Pilate and Others only tells the biblical story of the novel: the story of Pontius Pilate and Jesus.
Differences from the novel The biblical story of the novel is situated in
Jerusalem, but Wajda transferred it to
Germany in the present time. Levi Matvei is a modern TV reporter who makes reports from
Golgotha; Yeshua Ha-Nozri passes
Way of the Cross on streets of
Frankfurt.{{cite web ==Cast==