The FINANCIAL -- Experts are calling for a ban on the Russian drama 'Tsar', directed by Pavel Lungin, a film is chronicling the bloody life and times of Ivan the Terrible, Russia’s medieval ruler.

Historian Vyacheslav Manyagin turned to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to outlaw the movie, insisting it shows Russia's first tsar as a crazed sadist and a murderous tyrant, which he claims is an eventual insult to Russian statehood, DailyIndia.com reports.

The blockbuster, released earlier this month, has triggered an ill-tempered debate in religious and historical circles at a time when the Kremlin is encouraging Russians to take patriotic pride in their often brutal history, according to Telegraph. In the film, Ivan the Terrible is shown as a murderous tyrant who puts himself above God and punishes his real and imagined enemies with cruel and unusual deaths.

In one scene, the Russian ruler has his disgraced military commanders torn apart by a bear. In another, he has the head of the Russian church murdered. In a third, his enforcers burn a church and its occupants to the ground, the same source reports. "Imagine that they made a film in America about George Washington in which the first US president was portrayed as a bloodthirsty maniac," Mr Manyagin said. "This film slanders the Russian people and state."

Ivan IV, know as Ivan the Terrible, is most known for his brutal ruling, centralised administration of Russia and expantion of the boundaries of the Russian Empire. He was born in MOSCOW on August 25, 1530, the oldest son of Vasilij III, Guide to Russia informs. Ivan the Terrible assumed the throne in 1547 at the age of seventeen and immediately proclaimed himself “Tsar” (Czar) , instead of Grand Duke. In the same year Ivan married Anastasia Romanov. When Anastasia died in 1560, he remarried. Among his wives are Marie Tscerkaski (1561) and Maria Sobakina (1571).

Ivan justly deserved his reputation as a tyrant and his reign was peppered with battles with foreign invaders, according to Guide to Russia.

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