Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, who came to present his new film on the Croisette on Tuesday May 24, expressed his opposition to the boycott of Russian artists because of their nationality, despite the
"devastating"
Russian invasion in Ukraine, during an interview with the AFP.
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The Cannes regular with films like
Maïdan
(2014), on the Ukrainian revolution, or
Donbass
(2018), stands out from many of his compatriots.
He was kicked out of the Ukrainian Film Academy in March for refusing to lump all Russian artists together.
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Deciding who are the good and the bad is
"grotesque"
, said the director, who came to present
The Natural History of Destruction
in official competition, a documentary on the destruction of German cities by the Allies during the Second World War.
This attitude is inhuman
.
“How do you define the concept of Russian?
Are you Russian because of your passport, your citizenship?
Of your ethnicity?
It's a slippery slope
,” he said.
“I am a firm believer that people should be judged on their statements, their individual actions and not on their passports. Each individual case must be judged on its own merits
.
No official Russian representation in Cannes
Some voices have been raised against the presence of Russian Kirill Serebrennikov, in competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival, with his film
Tchaikovsky's Wife
.
Breaking with the regime, the director and theater director now lives in Berlin, where he has settled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Even if he condemned the war, certain Ukrainian personalities of the seventh art reproach him for having accepted financing from the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
“I am asked the question of the role of Abramovitch who holds one of the funds which financed my film. Abramovich is someone who has helped contemporary art projects and NGOs a lot (…) and he is someone who has been involved in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia,” said
Abramovich .
he recently explained to AFP.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Cannes Film Festival decided not to host any official Russian representation or Russians who defend the Kremlin line on Ukraine.
But, its general delegate Thierry Frémaux had defended the idea of welcoming Russian dissidents:
“There are Russian artists, journalists, who have left Russia.
Kirill Serebrennikov is a man who considered that if he did not leave Russia, he was complicit in this war”
.
