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 in which Satan, going by the name of Woland, appears in the Moscow of the 1930s to deal in a hilarious manner with the corrupt lucky ones—the bureaucrats, toadies, poets, and profiteers—in the Stalinist era, a second one describing the internal struggles of Pontius Pilate before, during and after the conviction and crucifixion 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 extreme lengths to save her beloved. The Master has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, and is persecuted by the authorities and the Soviet literary establishment in the officially and militantly atheist Soviet Union.The film Pilate and Others only tells the biblical story of the novel: the story of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha Nozri (Jesus from Nazareth).Differences from the novelThe biblical story of the novel is situated in Jersjalajim, but Wajda transferred it to Germany van de 20ste eeuw 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 am Main.