Kiril Serébrennikov, the Russian filmmaker who challenges "the idiot who has pressed the war button"

On March 28, Kiril Serébrennikov (Rostov de Don, 52 years old) received a court order that lifted the ban on leaving Russia, to which he had been sentenced for three years in 2020. He did not hesitate and days later a His portrait circulated through social networks from Germany.

“I have moved to Berlin.”

He now walks quietly through Cannes to present his new feature film,

The nightmare that began in August 2017 has ended.

“For now”, he says sitting before a group of European journalists this Thursday in one of the halls of the Palace of Festivals.

That summer of 2017 he was arrested and placed under house arrest for alleged embezzlement of state funds from the Seventh Workshop, a group that worked at the Gogol Center in Moscow, which Serebrennikov directed.

The film and theater director, one of the most prestigious in his country, was picked up at the shooting in Saint Petersburg of

his film about Victor Tsoi, legendary Soviet rock musician.

Weeks before, at the beginning of the investigations, hundreds of personalities from Russian culture had signed a letter of support for Serébrennikov, where they pointed out that he was actually being persecuted for his leadership of the LGTBI+ movement and for his criticism of the Orthodox Church.

The letter was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Everything was in vain until April 2019, when his house arrest was annulled, although his passport was not returned.

More information

The cinema that Putin hates arrives at Cannes

These days in Cannes, Serebrennikov doesn't mince his words.

He never utters Putin's name, but he does call him "the idiot who pressed the war button."

Aren't you afraid?

Don't you want to go back to your country?

“My father is 90 years old and I talk to him twice a day.

Of course I want to go back.

I'm going through a very... strange situation.

And I am afraid of the Russian authorities.

Although, you know, fear kills the soul.

And I need my artistic freedom, my passion to work.

I am an artist, I hate politics.

It has been life, it has been someone else who has decided to hate me and fuck me.

My work has never been political at all.

Okay, I grant that all art is political.

That said, I have never sought to send a message.”

Not even against Russia's anti-gay laws, as hinted at in the subtext of a new film?

"They're so ridiculous...

Everyone understands that they are garbage.

They try to limit the world to what they describe as normal.

And what is normal?

More information

Photogallery: The images of the festival

Both

(2018), which ended from home, and

(2021) participated in the Cannes Competition, and their director defended them from a distance, in telematic connection.

Returning to the French competition, in which he was in 2016 with

the director wants to make it clear that one thing is the culture of his country and quite another the Putin government, which has dragged Russia “into a war without sense".

Regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the filmmaker assured that it is the event that gives a trace of sadness to the premiere

"Without this war, because it is war, stop calling it an operation, we would all feel better, I cannot be happy knowing that they are launching bombs against cities, I have Ukrainian friends and the situation is tragic," he explains.

“For us Russians, especially those of us who oppose the government, it gives us a feeling of helplessness.

When we were building a new culture, theater, art, cinema, when we were making Russia truly a part of Europe… In a second this effort has been destroyed.”

Image from 'Tchaikovsky's Wife'

Serébrennikov is just as forceful when reflecting on the boycott of any Russian citizen and his work, claimed from Ukraine, and which has marked the screening of his film in Cannes: “The boycott of Russian culture is unbearable to me because it has always promoted values such as fragility and compassion, has delved into the fragility of life”.

And he affects: “The people who unleash wars and throw others into the trenches are not interested in life or pain.

The word war and the word culture are antagonistic”.

About his work, he clarifies: “It is the kind of subversive cinema opposed to the Kremlin's propaganda and the paranoid ideology of the current Russian regime.

I don't think it's worthy of a boycott."

Director Kiril Serébrennikov, wearing a cap, along with actors Alyona Mikhailova, Odin Lund Biro and Filipp Avdeev at the gala session for 'Tchaikovsky's Wife'. PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW (REUTERS)

Petrov's Flu

and

have been produced in part by Kinoprime, the foundation of Roman Abramovich, the Russian tycoon sanctioned for his friendship and business ties with the Putin regime, which provoked criticism of the Cannes festival after the announcement of that

would compete in the 75th edition.

Serébrennikov defends him “as a patron of art”.

“Abramóvich has brought forward the best Russian auteur cinema in recent years.

Even [Ukrainian President] Zelensky asked [US President] Joe Biden not to sanction him in view of the possibility that he might mediate in the peace process.

These are delicate moments for Russian culture.”

Zelensky called at the Cannes opening ceremony for a new Chaplin to stop the conflict.

"A war can only be stopped by politicians, not artists."

He does not intend to forget that culture in exile.

"Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tarkovski... They have made me who I am, I cannot betray them," she says.

For this reason, he is already shooting a new film,

an adaptation of Emmanuel Carrère's book about the Soviet poet and politician, with a script by Carrère himself and Pawel Pawlikowski: "It's curious, from today's perspective, Limonov is a key figure in understanding the Russian drive to go to war with Ukraine.”