Russian filmmaker in exile Andrei Zvyagintsev once again denounces a war "as merciless as it is senseless" in response to the Kremlin spokesperson

The Russian filmmaker exiled in France Andreï Zviaguintsev, who called for the end of “carnage” in Ukraine by receiving the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, delivered a new charge against Russian power by accusing it of spreading “sorrow and tears”.

Awarded on May 23 evening in Cannes for Minotaura drama of the Russian bourgeoisie set against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the director had urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to “put an end to this butchery” and at “carnage”s’attirant la réponse acérée de Moscow.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, criticized the filmmaker on May 25 for never having “condemned the bloody massacre” which would have been perpetrated from 2014 by Ukraine in the Donbass region, scene of a revolt of pro-Russian separatists led by Moscow. This conflict was the start of the large-scale Russian invasion of February 2022. “If he had done it at the time, he would undoubtedly have had his say. But he no longer has this right”he believes.

In a press release sent to AFP on Thursday by the film’s production, Andreï Zviaguintsev, in turn, responded curtly: “Yes, it’s very true: I have no voice in the matter, just as a hundred million Russian citizens do not have a voice. Because you have never heard their voices”he writes in this message translated into French.

According to the 62-year-old director, the only answer “fair and rational” Russian authorities should be “to put an end to this war as merciless as it is senseless”otherwise “nothing good is on the horizon”.

“Nothing except sorrow and tears; except disappointment and depressive apathy; except the torn limbs of your fellow citizens in the name of an illusory goal; except the massacre of young people whom the country needs to build life and the future”énumère le cinéaste.

Tourné in Latvia, Minotaur traces the moral drift of a Russian business leader deceived by his wife and accommodating calls for conscription to go and fight on the Ukrainian front. This is an adaptation ofThe Unfaithful Wife by Claude Chabrol, released in 1969, to be seen again on Arte. At Cannes, Andreï Zviaguintsev told AFP he doubted whether his film would one day be screened in his country because of its anti-war remarks.