Exiled Russian director returns to Cannes, decries war
Associated PressCANNES, France — The last two times the Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov had films playing at the Cannes Film Festival, he couldn’t attend. But after fleeing Russia in March once the ban ended, Serebrennikov was in Cannes Wednesday to premiere his latest film, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” which is competing for the Palme d’Or. In 2013, Russia enacted a law banning “gay propaganda.” “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” a fiercely political film made by one of Russia’s most prominent filmmaking dissidents, arrives in Cannes while Russia’s war rages in Ukraine and Europe has redrawn its cultural borders. “I take filmmaking and theater-making and culture-making as a big, vast statement against war,” Serebrennikov said in an interview Wednesday on a Palais des Festivals balcony ahead of his film’s premiere. His film premiered on the festival’s second day, which opened with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressing the gathering in an address that referenced films like Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” and urged filmmakers not to “stay silent.” Serebrennikov’s very presence at Cannes has been charged.
History of this topic
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The Independent
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Unable to leave Russia, director attends Cannes virtually
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