Russian cinema has shifted to fairytales and propaganda, says Ukrainian film-maker | Venice film festival

The Ukrainian film-maker Alexander Rodnyansky was as soon as on the very centre of Russia’s cultural life. Over twenty years he ran certainly one of Russia’s largest media conglomerates, produced among the most celebrated movies in latest Russian historical past – together with the Oscar nominees Leviathan and Loveless – and helped convey Russian cinema to worldwide prominence.However for the reason that invasion of Ukraine, Rodnyansky stated, he has witnessed an enormous shift in Russian cinema. “The most well-liked style in Russian cinema in the present day is fairytales,” the 64-year-old instructed the Guardian. “They adapt all of the tales we grew up with. There’s no single social drama, no film reflecting life in the course of the struggle.“The one supply of financing is the state. If you wish to make a film concerning the struggle itself, the one possibility is propaganda. Motion pictures about ‘Nazi Ukrainians’ killing first rate Russians, concerning the Russian military getting into Ukraine to save lots of the individuals of Donbas from these fascists and nationalists. It’s essentially the most silly bullshit you possibly can ever see.”Rodnyansky’s feedback emphasise a latest pattern of lavish diversifications of folks tales and kids’s tales changing into runaway hits in Russia. In 2023, Cheburashka, a youngsters’s ebook adaptation, earned greater than 6.5bn rubles (about £60m) on the home field workplace, changing into the highest-grossing Russian movie ever.The film-maker’s new documentary, Notes of a True Prison, premiering in Venice on Wednesday, rejects that fantasy, opting as a substitute for a deeply private meditation on Ukraine’s historical past, the continuing fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the way these occasions have formed his household throughout generations.It’s his first documentary in additional than 30 years and what he calls “essentially the most private movie of my life”.“It’s so private that I made a decision to fund it by myself, on a really small finances. In 40, 50 years it may be a video diary for my children and grandkids. It’s not a political film, or an pressing report on what’s happening in Ukraine. I wished to review the human price of the struggle,” he stated.The movie is instructed by way of a collection of vignettes, together with footage from Ukrainian troopers (some nonetheless alive, some lifeless), household movies, and clips from historic wars and tragedies together with Chornobyl. Its title comes straight from Rodnyansky’s personal latest ordeal.Final 12 months, the film-maker was sentenced in absentia by a Moscow court docket to eight and a half years in jail for spreading “pretend information” concerning the Russian military. Russia’s justice ministry declared him a “international agent”.For a person who spent a lot of his profession contained in the Russian institution, the ruling was a private rupture and a political inevitability.“It’s been fairly an expertise for me,” he stated. “I by no means had a Russian passport and citizenship. One way or the other I felt it was not proper, as a result of I had my Ukrainian sentiment and identification. However on the identical time I used to be in love with Russian movie historical past and tradition, I used to be formed by Russian literature. I had wonderful associates in Moscow.“I’ve [since] misplaced the reference to a few of them who fake this life is regular, who don’t communicate out.”Two days after the invasion began, Rodnyansky stated, a letter written by the Russian defence minister to the tradition minister “demanded to eradicate the participation of President Zelenskyy and myself within the Russian cultural agenda”.“I by no means knew I used to be part of Russian cultural agenda,” he stated. “The following day, my spouse and I packed our instances and left our dwelling.”Although he makes mild of his sentence – “it’s a really cinematic sentence,” he joked, citing Fellini’s masterpiece 8½ – he stated the repercussions have been critical.“It’s a part of their technique of intimidation of people that reside in Russia. It additionally makes me suppose twice earlier than travelling. I don’t go to international locations with shut ties to Russia.”The director stated he was cautious of latest diplomacy. Of Donald Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska this month, he stated: “Ukrainians went completely loopy over this footage of Putin on the crimson carpet. A variety of Ukrainians need the struggle to finish, however they don’t belief Trump to finish it in a satisfying method. There’s a line between compromise and capitulation, and capitulation is unacceptable.”The struggle has reshaped relationships between Ukrainians and Russians, he stated. “Ukrainians are traumatised. Most don’t have the emotional sources to guage between good and dangerous Russians. They imagine each single Russian is morally accountable. However there are plenty of Russians who’re supportive of Ukraine. Greater than one million left Russia when the struggle began, and plenty of criticise the Kremlin.”Final month, dozens of Ukrainian writers and artists urged the UK’s Royal Ballet and Opera to drop the Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko from its new London season, calling her a “longtime image of cultural propaganda” for the Russian authorities. Ought to she and different Russian artists be boycotted?“We have to separate individuals who assist Putin from those that communicate out in opposition to him,” Rodnyansky stated. “There are many wonderful Russian cultural figures who’ve strongly opposed Putin for years. Netrebko supported Putin in 2014, however so far as I do know she condemned the struggle afterwards. Folks can change their opinions.“Even in the course of the second world struggle, everybody knew the distinction between [Erich Maria] Remarque or Thomas Mann and German cultural figures supporting the Nazis.”