(Cannes) Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, who came to present his new film on the Croisette on Tuesday, 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.
Posted at 2:01 p.m.
The Cannes regular with films like Maidanon the Ukrainian revolution, or Donbass, 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.
Deciding who are the good and the bad is “grotesque”, said the director, who came to present The Natural History of Destructiona documentary about the destruction of German cities by the Allies during World War II.
“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 firmly believe 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”.
Some voices have been raised against the presence of the Russian Kirill Serebrennikov, competing in the 75and Cannes Film Festival, with his film Tchaikovsky’s wife. Breaking away from the regime, the director and theater director now lives in Berlin, where he has settled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Although he condemned the war, some Ukrainian personalities from the 7and art accuse him of having accepted financing from the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
“I have been asked the question of the role of Abramovich, who holds one of the funds that financed my film. Abramovitch is someone who has helped contemporary art projects, NGOs […] and he is someone who has been in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia,” 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”.