EFA Board initiates Sentsov letter

The Board of the European Film Academy has initiated a letter to Russian authorities about Oleg Sentsov.

Sentsov was arrested last month [see separate story here] and European film-makers have signed the letter to express their worry about the fate of the Ukrainian film-maker.

The letter states that “we are deeply worried and cannot stop wondering how he is and what his future will be,” and goes on to call upon the Russian authorities to ensure the safety of Sentsov and to make public his whereabouts.

Pedro Almodóvar, Ken Loach, Béla Tarr and Wim Wenders are among the film-makers to have signed the letter.

The letter in full

To

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin - President of Russia
Sergey Evgenyevich Naryshkin – Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation
Alexander Wassiljewitsch Bortnikow - Director of the FSB
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kolokoltsev - Russian Minister of Internal Affairs
Vladimir Medinsky - Russian Minister of Culture
Yuriy Yakovlevich Chaika - Prosecutor General

According to the information currently available, the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was arrested by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) in his house in Simferopol on 11 May and brought to Moscow where he is detained and awaiting trial. There has not been any official information about the charges brought up against him for almost three weeks.

We, his undersigning European colleagues, are deeply worried and cannot stop wondering how he is and what his future will be. In the light of these circumstances, we respectfully call upon you

• to ensure the safety of Oleg Sentsov;
• to make public the whereabouts of the detained;
• to have the detained charged with a recognisable offence or released;
• to instigate a full, prompt and impartial investigation into the apparently arbitrary detention by the FSB in order to bring all those responsible to justice

Yours faithfully,

Agustín Almodóvar, producer, Spain
Pedro Almodóvar, director, Spain
Stephen Daldry , director, UK
Mike Downey, producer, UK
Agnieszka Holland, director, Poland
Aki Kaurismäki, director, Finland
Mike Leigh, director, UK
Ken Loach, director, UK
Wojciech Marczewski, director, Poland
Rebecca O’Brien, producer, UK
Daniel Olbrychski, actor, Poland
Antonio Saura, producer, Spain
Volker Schlöndorff, director, Germany
Jerzy Stuhr, actor/director, Poland
Béla Tarr, director, Hungary
Betrand Tavernier, director, France
Andrzej Wajda, director, Poland
Wim Wenders, director, Germany
Krzysztof Zanussi, director, Poland