Six months on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, European film festivals are still wrestling with the dilemma of whether they should show Russian films.
One event which has weighed up the decision is the Sarajevo Film Festival, which runs from August 12-19. The festival launched in 1995 when the city was still under siege from the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian war.
“It [the war] brings back memories of our recent past when people from Sarajevo were refugees all over Europe,” says festival director Jovan Marjanovic, who earlier this week outlined to Screen how the event is supporting Ukrainian filmmakers.
The festival also supports freedom of expression and won’t discount programming films made by dissident Russian directors.
Notably, Sarajevo is hosting a retrospective of films by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, who was expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy early in the war in part for expressing support for dissident Russian filmmakers. Loznitsa will receive an honorary Heart of Sarajevo award.
“We haven’t been faced with a hard decision because of the [southeast Europe] regional focus of the Sarajevo Film Festival [competition]. Russia is not part of that region,” the festival director notes.
Boycotting propaganda
“Obviously, we have an opinion on it,” Marjanovic adds. “In our other programmes, the international sections etc, there are no Russian films that were funded by the Ministry or are in any way connected to the regime. However, there are Russian filmmakers and films in the Russian language.”
These include Anna Shishova’s Russian human rights doc The New Greatness Case, which is European financed, and Ukrainian filmmaker Igor Ivanko’s Russian, Ukrainian and Polish language doc Fragile Memory, about his grandfather, renowned cinematographer Leonid Burlaka.
“We wouldn’t boycott films just because they are Russian,” explains Marjanovic. “We would boycott any kind of propaganda or any kind of regime-supported activities.”
This is the rub. Both Karlovy Vary and Munich were criticised for programming Russian films. Tchaikovsky’s Wife by dissident Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov screened in Munich having caused controversy in Cannes, while Karlovy Vary showed Captain Volkonogov Escaped in spite of the film being made with Russian state support.
Irate Ukrainian filmmakers wrote to Karlovy Vary, accusing the festival organisers of “whitewashing” Putin’s regime at a time when the Russian army is “killing thousands of innocent people.”
There was similar anguish (and another strongly worded letter) from the Ukrainian film sector about the Transilvania Film Festival’s decision in June to show Russian thriller The Execution, which also had state support and backing from oligarch Roman Abramovich’s Kinoprime Foundation.
Encouraging dialogue
However, some festivals are looking to encourage dialogue between the warring countries.
Marjanovic points out that the Sarajevo Festival started screening films by Serbian directors from its second edition onwards in spite of the bad feeling between Bosnia and Serbia.
“We feel strongly that festivals should be bridges between people, between cultures and between ideas,” he says.
Locarno Festival director Giona A. Nazzaro insists that Locarno “stands with Ukraine” and with “the idea that we need to support the Ukrainian film community.” Like Sarajevo, the festival, which ran from August 3-14, did not present Russian films supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture.
Ukrainian director Natalya Vorozhbyt, who fled Ukraine in order to seek refuge in Vienna at the start of the war, presented a short film in the Postcards from the Future’ section while Ukrainian filmmaker Christina Tynkevych’s How Is Katia? screened in Filmmakers of the Present.
“We watched Russian films…we obviously watched independent Russian films because they still exist. We did not keep against the independent Russian films the same attitude that we have against the films officially supported by the Ministry. That is basically our stand,” Nazzaro says.
One high-profile Russian title, Alexander Sokurov’s Fairytale, screened in the festival’s competition.
“It does not have any [Russian] state funding and so far the film has not received any visa for national exhibition in Russian cinemas,” Nazzaro explains of Locarno’s decision to screen the title, a fantasy which depicts Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Churchill in purgatory.
The 79th Venice Film Festival has a Russian title, Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s Goliath, a coproduction with Kazakhstan, in its Orizzonti Extra section. Venice festival organisers made it clear at the start of the war in Ukraine that they would not ban Russian filmmakers who oppose the regime and the war. However, it appears the Russian presence on the Lido will be minimal.
“There is no place for dialogue [with Russia] while we have war in Ukraine,” insists Ukrainian producer Aleksandra Kostina whose film Pamfir directed by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk premiered in the Cannes Quinzaine and has been screening on the festival circuit since then.
“We are happy when festivals are sharing and understanding our position. Of course, it is always very disappointing when they don’t.”
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