The Venice International Film Festival, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, is among the world’s most influential cinematic platforms, and its choices carry real weight in what the international cultural community recognizes and legitimizes, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine said in a statement.
It is for this reason that the inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’s film “DAU” in the Main Competition of Venezia 83, where it will compete for the Golden Lion, raises profound concern.
russia has long used culture as an instrument of state policy and hybrid warfare. For the kremlin, culture is a way to restore to sanctioned figures the respectability that politics has taken from them; to legitimize its presence where its tanks cannot reach; and to appropriate the history of the very lands it seeks to erase. Every prestigious platform that accepts a kremlin-financed project becomes, for moscow, a test – of how far International institutions are prepared to tolerate russia`s crimes, and of what they will call “neutral” while the war of aggression against Ukraine continues.A careful study of background of the “DAU” film illustrates our point. It should be recalled that the project was financed by Sergei Adoniev, a russian businessman sanctioned by both the United States and Ukraine and credibly linked to putin’s regime. The film’s director, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, headed a cultural project funded by kremlin-connected russian oligarchs that was widely criticized by Ukrainian and international intellectuals. The film’s lead actor, Teodor Currentzis, accepted russian citizenship granted by Vladimir putin and built his musical career through funding from sanctioned russian state banks and state-backed cultural institutions.
We are calling upon the Venice International Film Festival and the wider cultural community to recognize how russia weaponizes culture as an instrument of its hybrid war, and to stop mistaking kremlin-backed cultural projects for politically neutral ones.
