Enlarge image
Oliver Stone (right) with former Ukrainian Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko
Photo: Everett Collection / IMAGO
Several activists disrupted the screening of a film about the Maidan protests in Ukraine in Leipzig.
The members of the German-Ukrainian artist group Ostov-Collective criticized the pro-Russian attitude of the documentary film “Ukraine on Fire” (2016) produced by US director Oliver Stone.
There were fisticuffs between the activists and the organizers.
The broadcast at the globalization-critical film festival "Globale" (July 27th - November 1st) on Thursday evening in the open air was interrupted for a few minutes.
According to the first findings of the police, six people had disturbed the demonstration with drums and tried to take the microphone out of the hand of an organizer.
According to the Ostov Collective, the organizer then punched an activist in the face.
According to the police, no one was injured.
The police spokesman said that people from the activist group were being investigated for attempted bodily harm.
Officials were present during the broadcast.
"Ukraine on Fire" deals, among other things, with the historical background to the Maidan protests in Ukraine in 2013/14 against the then government of Viktor Yanukovych, as the organizers wrote on their website.
Accordingly, the film shows that the protests were "in reality" a coup d'etat, planned and staged by nationalist groups and the US State Department.
Released in 2016, the film was widely criticized as »propaganda« that sided with the ousted pro-Russian government of Yanukovych.
The city of Leipzig expressly distanced itself from the film in the run-up to the screening.
In 2017, Oliver Stone made a four-part documentary about his interviews with Vladimir Putin.
The »Süddeutsche Zeitung« on this: »Not a documentary, but an autocrat porn.«
In early March, Stone described Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine as "unjustified" and a mistake.
However, in an article for Weltwoche in May, he speculated about a "low-yield nuclear explosion of unknown origin somewhere in the Donbass region, killing thousands of Ukrainians," for which the United States is creating the conditions and which one blame Russia.
feb/dpa