“Young Stalin,” Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography of Joseph Stalin’s life as a bank robber in pre-revolutionary Russia, is being made into a film.

The feature film is produced by Archil Gelovani and Sergey Yahontov's Georgia-based Independent Film Project (IFP), producers of the recent Venice Special Jury Prize winner "April," along with Sam Taylor of Film and Music Entertainment, with financing from Len Blavatnik's Access Entertainment, which backed Jonathan Glazer's acclaimed Oscar-winning film "The Zone of Interest."

Slated for production in 2025/26, “Young Stalin” tells the story of a twentysomething “Soso” (a nickname given to him by his mother) who led a group of revolutionaries on a massive bank heist to rob the Imperial Bank in Tbilisi in 1907, in the process becoming the man known as “Stalin.” As the description goes, this was “the Wild Wild East, made up of Cossacks, Bolshevik gunslingers, the Tsar’s secret police, and proto-fascist brigades.”

“Young Stalin” is the latest addition to the upcoming slate for IFP, which is also in post-production on the UK/Poland/Georgia co-production “Winter of the Snow,” starring BAFTA and Oscar nominees Lesley Manville, Tom Burke and Zofia Wichłacz. Set in the surreal and cinematic setting of 1981 Warsaw, the Cold War thriller is from award-winning director Kasia Adamik. The film is produced by Olga Chajdas, Stanislaw Dziedzic, Katarzyna Ozga, Nicolas Steil and Sam Taylor for production companies Wild Mouse, Film Produkcja, Iris & Film and Music Entertainment Ltd and is co-produced by Douglas Cummins. Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland is on board as executive producer alongside Archil Gelovani and Independent Film Project executive producer Sergey Yahontev and Paul Miller and Ursula Romero Gerberding for ISB.