Every week, Bor Beekman, Robert van Gijssel, Merlijn Kerkhof, Anna van Leeuwen or Herien Wensink take a stand in the world of film, music, theater or visual arts.
“Is it possible that you—humanists, human rights defenders, and promoters of freedom and democracy—are too afraid to call war a war, condemn barbarity and make your voices heard?”
Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa was furious this week. At the European Film Academy. How did the organization of the ‘European Oscars’ manage to release such a weak ‘statement of solidarity’, when it was already raining Russian bombs on Ukraine?
“The invasion is of great concern to us,” read the words of Dutch EFA director Matthijs Wouter Knol. ‘Shameful’, said Loznitsa, who canceled his membership of the 4,000-member European Academy in an open letter.
They certainly felt that, at the EFA headquarters in Berlin. Loznitsa is a distinguished cinematographer: maker of sublime documentaries like Maidanthe film about the Ukrainian square uprising of 2014. He also directed the pitch-black comedy Donbass† about the war madness in eastern Ukraine, a film that is now showing again in cinemas as a benefit for Ukrainian refugees.
So a day later a new press release was issued from the European Film Academy, this time with a strong condemnation of the war, plus the announcement that the organization will boycott Russian films; they cannot win any European film prizes this year.
This is in line with the Ukrainian Academy, which previously called for a general boycott of Russian cinema.
Again Loznitsa was furious. The very first colleague who e-mailed him after the Russian invasion was Victor Kossakovsky. ‘Forgive me,’ wrote the Russian docu-maestro, ‘this is a catastrophe: I am ashamed.’ Colleague Andrei Zvyagintsev, seriously affected by corona, also immediately left a video message for Loznitsa. Zvyagintsev is perhaps the greatest Russian filmmaker of our time. He is the creator of Leviathan, a crushing drama about corruption-soaked Russia. A film that was publicly spat on at its premiere in Cannes by Putin adept and then Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky. We as a government should not support these kinds of films, said the man who heads the negotiating delegation on behalf of Russia these weeks.
“When I hear the calls for Russian films to be banned, I think of these kinds of filmmakers,” Loznitsa said after the EFA press release. ‘Russian filmmakers speaking out against this insane war. They too are victims of the aggression, just like us.’
Petrov’s Fluc is currently in Dutch cinemas, from the Russian Kirill Serebrennikov. He directed this nightmarish impression of Russian society right after his release. He previously spoke out against the annexation of Crimea, and for LGBTI rights, after which the Russian authorities saddled him with a nonsense charge of corruption, convicted in a show trial and imposed 20 months house arrest.
Is this one of those Russian filmmakers who should now be boycotted by the European Film Academy?
Russia – and Europe – needs more films from makers like Kossakovsky, Zvyagintsev and Serebrennikov.
Not less.