The Russian Filmmaker Trapped Between Hollywood and Moscow
Last December, a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine, Kirill Serebrennikov, the film and theater director, applied for parole on the basis of good behavior. Serebrennikov was arrested in 2017 on embezzlement charges, though it was widely understood that his real offense was producing work that irritated the Kremlin. He spent 20 months on house arrest and another year standing trial, before being sentenced to three years’ probation. In late March, a Russian court suspended his remaining sentence, and the very next day, he fled to Germany. By May, he was at the Cannes Film Festival, in the south of France, for the premiere of his new film, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife.” When Serebrennikov emerged in a small room at the Palais des Festivals for a news conference, the moderator introduced him as “someone who we’ve eagerly awaited for three years.” Serebrennikov had missed the premieres of his last two films at the festival: “Summer,” in 2018, when he was confined to his Moscow apartment under the surveillance of an ankle monitor, and last year’s “Petrov’s Flu.” Cannes is among a handful of European festivals where Hollywood executives go shopping for talent. A strong showing there can catapult an art-house director to the helm of a Hollywood movie or the sale of their next feature. Were it not for the war, Serebrennikov’s attendance this year would have marked the triumphant return of a dissident. But after Ukrainian filmmakers called for a boycott of Russian culture, Serebrennikov was mostly addressed as a representative of his hostile country. The day got off to a rough start pretty much right away when a journalist from Moldova, which borders Ukraine, stood up and said that if the war didn’t end soon, Odesa would soon be besieged by bombs. Serebrennikov sat at the front of the room in tinted glasses and a black cap, against a backdrop that featured a still from “The Truman Show.” The director reminded everyone that his film was made before the war, but said he understood those who wanted to boycott him. “It’s so hurtful what’s happening to their country,” he said in response to another question, “so unbearable, so difficult.” But, he added, “calling for a ban based on nationality, we’ve been here before. It’s not possible and it can’t be done.” Several international film festivals had excluded films by Russian directors. When Cannes said that it would ban Russians with government ties while signaling that it would still allow those who opposed the country’s regime, it further ignited tensions. Serebrennikov had been hearing rumors that Ukrainians would stage a protest to disrupt the premiere. A few days earlier, the director, who is 52, called his father, who still lives in Rostov-on-Don, the Southern Russian city where Serebrennikov grew up, and asked him to wish him luck. “Hopefully,” he said, “the Ukrainians don’t pelt us with tomatoes.” ‘You don’t have to cancel Russians, because Russians are already very good at canceling themselves.’Cannes made efforts to mitigate the controversy, devoting a special program to Ukrainian film and opening the festival with a live address from President Volodymyr Zelensky. But other theatrics felt tone deaf, such as the French fighter jets that thundered low overhead in honor of the “Top Gun: Maverick” premiere — which directly followed Serebrennikov’s — and sent a group of Ukrainian filmmakers ducking for cover. Serebrennikov’s assistant, Anna Shalashova, joked that at least the red, white and blue trails painted by the jets across the sky were in the right order, and not that of the Russian flag. “Can you imagine?” she said. At the news conference, Serebrennikov acknowledged the difficulty of being a Russian artist. But the questions kept coming: about the war, about the boycott, about Serebrennikov’s connections to the state. A Ukrainian journalist asked why the director was allowed to leave Russia, a question that seemed to suggest suspicious timing. At one point, the moderator tried to steer the conversation back to the film by addressing the actors, who had yet to be asked anything. But Serebrennikov looked pained. He stroked his lower lip with his index finger and stared into the middle distance. When the very next question returned to the boycott, he dropped his head dramatically, like someone in the midst of a losing game. If there was a final blow, it came via a reporter from Deadline Hollywood, who asked about Roman Abramovich, the sanctioned oligarch who had contributed funding to the film. Serebrennikov spoke for some time about how he hadn’t accepted state funding since 2016 and how much Abramovich has helped Russia’s independent filmmakers and him personally. (Serebrennikov says the billionaire helped pay off his $1.9 million in state fines and legal fees.) But it didn’t matter. The only part that would resound in the press for days was when he quoted Zelensky, who had asked the United States not to sanction Abramovich because of his role in the peace negotiations. “And I agree,” Serebrennikov said. By the afternoon, a version of the headline was everywhere: “ ‘Tchaikovsky’s Wife’ Director Calls for Sanctions Against Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich to Be Lifted.” The reaction among Serebrennikov’s supporters was swift, too. Some thought it was tasteless. Others went so far as to call Serebrennikov a traitor. Russian authorities had silenced the country’s free press, but its leading journalists were now dispersed across Europe and broadcasting on YouTube. Among them was Denis Kataev from TV Rain, Russia’s last independent news channel, which abruptly switched to showing Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” when it was forced off Russian airwaves in March. In a video posted shortly after the news conference, Kataev speculated that Serebrennikov had jeopardized his film’s distribution. “I don’t want to bad-mouth Kirill like a lot of our colleagues are doing,” Kataev said, “but when there is a war going on you have to choose words carefully.” It has been almost six months since the war began. Weapons and resources have poured into Ukraine from all over the world, as Western governments have moved to isolate Russia economically. But as the war grinds on, some of the other efforts to punish the country now seem absurd. Dumping bottles of Stoli vodka, a product of Latvia, did not stop the war. Nor did canceling reservations at Russian restaurants, many owned by refugees who left the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Tchaikovsky died in 1893, but after Russia attacked Ukraine, performances of his music were canceled in Wales, Ireland, Greece, the Czech Republic and Japan. The cultural boycott had begun with Russian artists who supported Putin, but soon even those who had denounced the war — a pianist in Canada, a cellist in Switzerland, two filmmakers at the Glasgow Film Festival — were disinvited from their engagements. Maybe it was because of politics or because Western audiences just weren’t in the mood to engage with Russian art. But by the time a university in Milan suspended a lecture series on Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and then had to backtrack after it was pointed out that the author had been exiled to Siberia, the exact purpose of the boycott had become a bit muddled. Eventually, the issue migrated to its next logical staging ground: Hollywood. Netflix, which had doubled down on international programming after the success of “Squid Game,” halted production on four Russian-language shows, including “Anna K,” a modern-day adaptation of “Anna Karenina,” which had already been filmed. Apple TV+ considered rewriting the characters on a show still in development, at one point known as “The Untitled Russian Billionaires Project,” to be from Belarus or Serbia, and scrapped plans for “Container,” its first Russian-language series, acquired as part of a now-dead coproduction deal with a streaming service partly owned by Alisher Usmanov, a sanctioned Russian oligarch.Executives understandably panicked about whom they had been meeting with and where exactly their money was flowing. Some wondered if an indiscriminate ban could put pressure on companies or oligarchs, who may or may not have a direct line of communication to Putin. Perhaps that was worth trying, even if it didn’t work, which it probably wouldn’t. Sure, some artists would lose work, but the larger issue was that civilians were being killed. It made sense to pull out of deals with sanctioned entities, but how to sort through all the rest?Our Coverage of the Russia-Ukraine WarOn the Ground: After a summer of few conclusive battles, Ukraine and Russia are now facing a quandary over how to concentrate their forces, leaving commanders in a guessing game about each other’s next moves.Nuclear Shelter: The Russian military is using а nuclear power station in southern Ukraine as a fortress, stymying Ukrainian forces and unnerving locals, faced with intensifying fighting and the threat of a radiation leak.Refugees in Europe: The flow of people fleeing Ukraine has increased pressure across the region. Some cоuntries are paying shipping firms to offer new arrivals safe but tight quarters.Prison Camp Explosion: After a blast at a Russian detention camp killed at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war, Ukrainian officials said that they were building a case of a war crime committed by Russian forces.When the war began, Anastasia Palchikova, a Russian filmmaker, was finalizing a deal for a series at a major American network. Palchikova signed open letters against the war and attended protests in Moscow, where her husband was arrested. Soon she began receiving threatening phone calls, calling her a traitor. In April, she left for Istanbul. By then she had heard that her deal was now in limbo. (She asked me not to name the network in case the show was later revived.) Palchikova’s U.S. agent, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because of company policy, told me that the network’s executives are aware of Palchikova’s activism. “But then they take it up the chain,” the agent said, “and these are all giant corporations that can’t be seen, like, funneling money to Russians.” Serebrennikov, at a court hearing in Moscow in 2017.Vasily Maximov/Agence France-Press, via Getty ImagesOther projects were investigated and cleared. Alex Reznik, an Odesa-born actor and producer in Los Angeles, had a show briefly paused at one of the streaming platforms. “They just said we need to do some due diligence,” he told me. Reznik previously produced the Emmy-winning Netflix series “Seven Seconds,” which was inspired by a Russian film; his new show is also based on Russian material. He wasn’t sure why it was ultimately allowed to proceed. “I don’t think people in the industry know what the rules are right now,” Reznik said. “Some companies in Russia are sanctioned, you can’t do business. But to what extent?” Russia’s film industry can be hard to sort through. Unlike Hollywood, which is self-sufficient and funded by a hundred-year-old studio system, Russian culture, like that of France or Germany, largely relies on state funding. If one were to define a filmmaker who has accepted those funds as having ties to the state — as the Glasgow Film Festival did — that’s going to cast a wide net. Russian filmmakers seeking private financing often end up dealing with companies with unsavory backers or patrons like Abramovich. In other words, you can reject these channels or you can make a movie; it is difficult to do both. Navigating this system requires some dexterity. Ilya Stewart, who produced the last four of Serebrennikov’s films, told me that he implicitly understood which projects were too overtly political to ask the government to finance. “Because I’d rather not put them in an uncomfortable position,” he said. “And that’s how a lot of people operated who understood how the system worked.” (Full disclosure: My brother has worked as a producer and talent manager in Russia’s film industry.) Russia’s Ministry of Culture has backed plenty of films that glorify Russia, such as “Going Vertical,” a sports drama about the time the Soviet Union defeated the United States Olympic basketball team, and “Stalingrad,” a celebration of Russia’s stamina against the infamous Nazi siege. But it has also financed films that appear to challenge the regime. The Venice Film Festival last year spotlighted “Captain Volkonogov Escaped,” a thriller about Stalin’s purges that was seen as a veiled critique of Putin’s Russia. That film received state financing. As did “Leviathan,” Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 Oscar-nominated film, which portrayed contemporary Russian life in such an unflattering light that it has never been shown on TV in Russia. The search for heroes and villains in Russia’s film industry can be a bit unsatisfying. Later, I found out that Palchikova’s show was based on a film she made about her childhood. But the rights were still controlled by a Russian production company backed by Gazprom, the state-owned gas monopoly. Palchikova offered to write a different version of the story, so that no Russian company could profit from an adaptation. But the network hasn’t budged. Palchikova stressed that the tragedy was the war, not the suspended projects. But she wondered if suppressing Russia’s oppositional voices was counterproductive. “When the Western world bans Russian people,” Palchikova said, “they are kind of doing the work for the Russian government.” In March, Russia passed a new law punishing the spread of misinformation, which includes calling the war a war, with up to 15 years in prison. By June, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Dmitry Glukhovsky, a popular sci-fi author who protested the war on social media. The director Michael Lockshin heard that the government also had screenshots from his Instagram, where he reposted Western coverage of the war. Furthermore, the fate of “Woland,” Lockshin’s forthcoming $15 million film based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” which is itself about censorship, was now uncertain. The state was withholding the film’s postproduction budget, which involves pricey special effects (there’s a talking cat); its distributor, Universal, had pulled out of Russia, and it has yet to be picked up by anyone else. “So now we’re censored in a way in Russia,” Lockshin said, “and also can’t take it abroad because it’s a Russian movie. It’s kind of a crazy situation.” Lockshin was glad to see that Cannes had accepted Serebrennikov’s film. He thought it sent a clear message that art shouldn’t be purely associated with its country of origin. “The whole industry is watching how it’s perceived there,” Lockshin said, “because it’s going to tell us what comes next.” A few days before his Cannes premiere, I met Serebrennikov in Amsterdam, where he was directing the opera “Der Freischütz.” Serebrennikov’s stage work, like his films, is often provocative and rebellious. At the Dutch National Opera, Serebrennikov had rewritten the 200-year-old German opus to be an opera about the opera, and added music by Tom Waits. When I arrived, a classically trained tenor was arguing over a line that the director wrote for him about the tenor’s wife’s request that he talk dirty like a baritone. “It doesn’t make any sense!” the tenor shouted. After rehearsals, Serebrennikov threw a green bomber jacket over a Thrasher T-shirt and black track pants. On his wrist was a faceless Margiela watch, which he said was “for people who don’t care about the time.” Outside, it had started to rain, which Serebrennikov, who is a Buddhist, observed more as a curiosity than a hindrance. “No one was predicting rain, but the rain still came,” he remarked. I’d heard that unlike other directors, Serebrennikov rarely raises his voice at actors, and I asked if that was true. “I don’t see the point,” he said. “Aggression and violence always happen from weakness.” There was a time when Serebrennikov benefited from the system that ultimately turned on him. He moved to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don in 2001, when the state — and this is hard to remember now — was eager to support the arts. For a decade, Serebrennikov staged performances at Moscow’s largest theaters and eventually caught the attention of Vladislav Surkov, a top Putin adviser who coined “sovereign democracy,” an unusual term for a system free of Western meddling and only democratic to the extent its leaders allowed. Surkov saw artists as a necessary tool in that arrangement: as both evidence of Russia’s modernity and its tentative patience toward free expression. In 2011, Serebrennikov was put in charge of Platform, a new federally funded arts festival, and, a year later, the Gogol Center, a sleepy theater that he turned into a hub for avant-garde performance. Simultaneously, he attended anti-Putin protests and staged an opera that parodied Kremlin politics. He even adapted a novel that Surkov wrote under a pseudonym, but made it into a commentary on corruption. As Putin muscled his way back into power in 2012, mass protests broke out across Russia. Putin demoted Surkov and gave the job of Minister of Culture to Vladimir Medinsky, a nationalist who warned against art that was at odds with “traditional values.” The same year, members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot were arrested and tried. Around this time, Serebrennikov made his first attempt at a Tchaikovsky biopic and was denied state funds because of the script’s homosexual themes. (Serebrennikov has spoken out in support of Russia’s beleaguered L.G.B.T. community, and his film deals with the composer’s closeted sexuality.) Instead, he got financing from Abramovich and in 2016 released “The Student,” which mocked the country’s increasing conservatism and religious hypocrisy. The next year, Serebrennikov was accused of fraud involving a state subsidy of $1.9 million for Platform. More
