Exiled Russian director returns to Cannes, decries war

The major prize-winners at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival have yet to be announced, but there is no question about which film is the most important. “Butterfly Vision” doesn’t just have the distinction of being one of the two Ukrainian productions on display (the other being Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s “Pamfir”), it also tells a story about the effects of warfare both on Ukraine’s soldiers and the citizens who have waited for them back home. It is almost incredible that Maksym Nakonechnyi was able to finish “Butterfly Vision” and to bring it to Cannes, where he made a touching speech about the risk of Ukrainian culture being extinguished.

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Cannes Film Festival.Members of the production team for “Butterly Vision,” by Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechni, protested the ongoing war in Ukraine while on the red carpet Wednesday.In front of Salle Debussy, the second-largest theater in Cannes, the team — including producers Darya Bassel and Yelizaveta Smit, plus actress Rita Burkovska — held a banner that read, “Russians kill Ukrainians. Do you find it offensive or disturbing to talk about this genocide?”The sirens heard on the red carpet stairs were meant to symbolize air raids in Ukraine, while the protestors held signs that read “sensitive content” over their faces.Not only were they demonstrating the ongoing devastation in Ukraine, but they were also attempting to show the extent of Russian censorship.The film “Butterfly Vision” explores a similar idea, albeit in a fictional world.

here. Earlier in the festival, an unplanned demonstration disrupted the red carpet for George Miller’s film “Three Thousand Years of Longing” when a topless, screaming woman wearing body paint of the Ukraine flag was escorted off the red carpet.

Lise Pedersen As the boundaries in cinema become increasingly fluid, emerging filmmakers whose films have been selected at the Cannes Film Festival have been discussing their journey from documentary to fiction at the Cannes Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar.Curated by the Documentary Assn. of Europe, the panel on Sunday brought together Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi, the director of Un Certain Regard title “Butterfly Vision,” and Erige Sehiri (“Railway Men”), the Tunisian director of “Under the Fig Leaves,” which had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.The titles are fiction debuts for Nakonechnyi and Sehiri, who are both experienced documentary filmmakers.Inspired by the conflict in Ukraine’s Eastern Donbas region that has been ongoing since 2014, “Butterfly Vision” is the story of a young Ukrainian soldier who returns home after being held captive for months and discovers she is pregnant after being raped by her Russian warden.

IndieWire. “I had to say, ‘F— the war, I hate you [Russian president Vladimir Putin], bye.’ You can’t be silent about this war.”Serebrennikov himself had been in hot water with Russian authorities back in 2017, when he was convicted of embezzlement through his theater company and banned from leaving the country — a decision which outraged human rights groups who denounced the charge as falsified.

Nick Holdsworth European Film Academy president Agnieszka Holland has criticized the Cannes Film Festival for welcoming a Russian movie to the main competition.The Polish-born director – who fled to France in 1981 when Communist authorities imposed martial law – said now was the time to stand up to Russian aggression in Ukraine.That demanded a total ban on Russian cultural products in Europe, she said in Cannes on Saturday.The Academy Award-nominated filmmaker slammed the festival’s inclusion of Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Tchaikovsky’s Wife.”“If it were up to me, I would not include Russian films in the official program of the festival – even if Kirill Serebrennikov is such a talented artist,” the 73 year old filmmaker said. Speaking in Cannes at an industry roundtable on supporting the Ukrainian film industry at a time of war, Holland added: “Unfortunately my bad feelings were confirmed by his words.

CANNES, France -- Lee Jung-jae, the award-winning star of Netflix's “Squid Game,” spent years developing the 1980s-set Korean spy thriller “Hunt” before electing to direct himself. He did it a little reluctantly, without big plans to continue filmmaking. But Lee did have a vision for what it could be — and where it could premiere.“Before deciding to direct, I thought I just wanted to make a very fun film,” Lee says.

Christopher Vourlias One day after dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, members of the Ukrainian film industry took to the Croisette to call for a total boycott of Russian movie. Meanwhile, just steps away in the Palais des Festivals, the director’s long-awaited return to cinema’s grandest stage was overshadowed by questions about the festival’s controversial selection and over the film’s financial ties to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.Speaking at a politically charged press conference on Thursday, Serebrennikov described Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “total catastrophe” but rejected calls for a boycott of Russian film.

Tchaikovsky’s Wife filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov, a Russian dissident was grilled, by the global press at Cannes over the pic being bankrolled by oligarch financing in particular Roman Abramovich, as well as the notion of the world’s boycott against Russia.

Returning to Cannes a year after his feverish drama “Petrov’s Flu” hit the Croisette, Kirill Serebrennikov can finally attend the festival in person after recently being free from years of house arrest. Debuting in competition, his latest offering, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” is a slow-burn historical drama that never manages to escape from being a bore despite its seemingly intriguing premise.

Christopher Vourlias Despite widespread calls to boycott Russian cinema in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, the Cannes Film Festival struck an uneasy compromise by banning state delegations and Russians with ties to President Vladimir Putin while allowing individual filmmakers to attend.It’s a decision iconoclastic Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov was quick to support on the eve of the world premiere of his latest feature, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” which bows in competition on May 18.The director was a no-show at his last two Cannes premieres due in no small part to a history of provocation and dissent against the Russian government. But Serebrennikov – who after a nearly five-year legal ordeal learned on March 28 that he could leave Russia a free man – insists that the type of subversive cinema he creates should be separated from pro-Kremlin propaganda and the “paranoid ideology” of the Putin regime. “Russian culture is about the fragility of life.

Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Frémaux took part in a ‘meet the press’ session with journalists in Cannes yesterday afternoon.

Christopher Vourlias As the war in Ukraine approaches a grim, three-month mile marker, and the Russian military continues its relentless onslaught, the harsh crackdown on domestic opposition by the Putin regime has left a beleaguered film industry pondering its next steps. Many Russian filmmakers fear they’ll have no choice but to toe the party line, or to flee a country that is increasingly being shut out of the international community.Two-time Oscar nominee Alexander Rodnyansky (“Leviathan,” “Loveless”), the Kyiv-born producer who has called Russia home for nearly three decades, left Moscow on March 1 after being tipped off that his opposition to the war had landed him in the government’s crosshairs.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorLeading arthouse sales company The Match Factory has acquired distribution rights to murdered Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius’ documentary “Mariupolis 2,” ahead of the film’s premiere next week at the Cannes Film Festival as a Special Screening.Kvedaravičius was captured and murdered by the Russian army in Mariupol, Ukraine in early April. The film was co-directed by Kvedaravičius’ fiancée Hanna Bilobrova, who was with him at the time of his death, and was able to bring back the footage filmed there, and edited it with his editor Dounia Sichov.The Match Factory worked with Kvedaravičius on his debut feature “Barzakh,” which played in the Berlinale in 2011.