Alexander Rodnyansky on financing October 7 drama ‘Of Dogs And Men’ and “misguided” protests against the film

Ukrainian producer Alexander Rodnyansky has explained how he came aboard Israeli filmmaker Dani Rosenberg’s harrowing drama Of Dogs And Men, sold by Rai Cinema, at such short notice.

Of Dogs And Men, which premieres in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons on September 5, was shot in November 2023 in Kibbutz Nir Oz and the border area with Gaza. It went into production only weeks after the horrific Hamas-led attack on October 7.

The prolific producer – whose previous credits include Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and Loveless – acknowledged he has never been involved in a film developed as quickly as this, explaining that he was approached by Rosenberg and producer/co-writer Itai Tamir of Laila Films shortly after the attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 Israeli and international hostages were taken.

“They wanted to tell the story of the horrible events on October 7th, and of the traumatic experience of the people who got through this massacre,” Rodnyansky said about their urgency.

“They pitched this project to me because they started with no funding, just as an idea. They screened some footage for me and I was deeply impressed. I decided to join the team and make it happen.”

The film, which was made in the kibbutzes where “the carnage happened”, has a fictional protagonist – a teenager called Dar looking for her lost dog.

Rodnyansky provided the funding to get the project underway. “They pitched an important idea that profoundly resonated with me. Knowing how difficult it is now to pitch any projects relating to Israeli subjects, I was lucky to be able to provide the funding on my own.”

Later on, other partners boarded including Rai Cinema and the Israel Film Fund. 

Since being programmed by Venice, the film has also come under an uncomfortable spotlight, with a group called Artists For Palestine Italia publishing an open letter with 350 signatories (including 120 BPM star Nahuel Perez Biscayart and filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad) demanding that Of Dogs And Men and Amos Gitai’s Why War be pulled from the festival for “whitewashing Israel’s oppression against Palestinians”.

Rodnyansky said he was aware of the petition but described it as “misguided and shortsighted”.

“No one who signed the petition has watched the film,” he said. “Of Dogs And Men is anything but a piece of war propaganda or a call for vengeance.

“Most importantly,” he added, “I deeply admire the position of the Venice Film Festival and specifically [artistic director] Alberto Barbera who, instead of shying away from controversial and even explosive issues, chose to embrace them and make the festival a place where all points of view are represented and respected.

“I believe this is the only way forward for everyone, not just the film community.”

Hostile exchanges with Mikhalkov

Rodnyansky himself was forced to leave Russia, where he was previously based, after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Now living in exile, he has been denounced as a “foreign agent” by the Russian government and was last year “arrested in absentia” on the charge of spreading fake news about the Russian army. He could face a prison sentence of eight to 10 years if he returned to Russia.

Speaking in Venice, he gave further details of his fiery exchanges with Oscar-winning Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt By The Sun), the current head of the Russian Cinematographers’ Union.

Rodnyansky sharply criticised what he called the “extraordinarily offensive and rude” behaviour of 78-year-old Mikhalkov, who remains close to Vladimir Putin’s government and was described by the BBC last year as a “religious conservative with extreme anti-western views”.

Rodnyansky revealed Mikhalkov had recently attacked him on Russian television and on his YouTube show Besogon, calling him a Russophobe who had lived in Russia and earned money in the country while secretly despising it. Mikhalkov also said the producer had “imposed a foreign language [Ukrainian] on the originally Russian people [Ukrainians]” through 1+1, the first Ukrainian independent television network which Rodnyansky founded in 1995.

Rodnyansky responded by posting a strongly worded message of his own on social media in which he referred to Mikhalkov as “a petty, lying, pathetic, talent-deprived old man, living on money from the state budget, making a living from denunciations, contemptuously thrown out by sanctions from his once beloved Europe”.

The irony is that Rodnyansky as a student and young filmmaker had been a huge admirer of Mikhalkov. 

“I remember how I looked at him lovingly when he came to our film department in Kyiv. I remember how I rejoiced at his [1995] Oscar for Burnt By The Sun. How I gratefully presented him with a prize for his creative contribution to the creative process during my time as head of Kinotavr,” Rodnyansky wrote.

“It’s sad to be disappointed. To see how an artist you once respected ages ugly, how he turns into a boor, an informer, a servile slave of power. Any power. I remember him next to Gorbachev, Rutskoi, Yeltsin, Nemtsov, Primakov, Putin. I remember how he showered them with flattering compliments, stroked their powerful hands and menacingly showered their enemies with insults.”

Speaking to Screen, Rodnyansky likened Mikhalkov to the main character in Istvan Szabo’s 1981 Oscar-winning feature Mephisto, an adaptation of Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel about a famous German stage actor who becomes a lackey to the Nazis.

“That’s what happened to him. He wanted so much to be close to power. He always finds explanations, excuses and apologies for what he does.”

Upcoming projects

The dispute with Mikhalkov hasn’t slowed Rodnyansky down. Of Dogs And Men is one of several new film and TV projects that he has in development or production in the US, Europe and Ukraine through his company AR Content.

Titles in the immediate pipeline, and likely to surface at major festivals in 2025, include Kornel Mundruczó’s At The Sea starring Amy Adams, which has just wrapped production, and Laszlo Nemes’ currently shooting father-son drama Orphan (which Charades and New Europe are co-selling).

About to go into production in Poland is Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi’s drama Occupation, based on an article in The Atlantic Monthly about the tribulations of a Ukrainian family at the start of Russia’s invasion.

Recently announced is TV mini-series Debriefing The President, based on John Nixon’s non-fiction book about the hunt for and interrogation of Saddam Hussein. Krzysztof Skonieczny is due to direct, with Joel Kinnaman in the role of Nixon. 

Rodnyasky, who is teaming up with US producer Leslie Greif on the project, said it has taken him six years to develop – as opposed to the weeks it took to get Of Dogs And Men into production.

The prolific producer is also developing two English-language projects with Russian director Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole). The closest to production is Butterfly Jam, although financing is not yet completed.

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