Kirill Serébrennikov has finally been able to attend the Cannes festival. The Russian filmmaker, theater director and dissident brought the film Leto to competition in 2018, but he could not be present because he was under house arrest accused of embezzling public funds at the head of the Gogol Center theater company.
Last year he connected by videoconference to talk about Petrov's Flu, with which he was competing for the Palme d'Or. And in this 75th edition, after managing to leave his country on March 28, he is taking Tchaikovsky's wife to the contest, centered on the tragic story of Antonina Miliukova, an educated young woman obsessed with the famous composer of El lago de los cines who was constantly repudiated by him in an unconsummated marriage to which Tchaikovsky agreed to quell rumors of his homosexuality.
With a script written by Serebrennikov himself, the film is beautifully shot with a classic and visually stunning staging, revealing the exquisite care with which each shot of a story doomed to absolute doom is shot. The photography, the costumes, the music, the relationships between the characters...everything overwhelms in the narration of the disturbing process of a divorce to which Antonina does not agree, stubborn in being the wife of an irritable man who despises her.
Supported by the extraordinary performance of Alyona Mikhailova, who goes from the happiness of falling in love to the most staunch fanaticism and self-destruction, the character works as a metaphor for other forms of resistance to authority. In turn, the film is also a portrait of the misery that reigned in the streets of the country at the end of the 19th century, it draws an oppressive system towards women, without voice or vote at that time, and shows the damage of a repressed homosexuality .
Serébrennikov has launched a resounding 'no to war' during his speech at the press conference. "Without this war we would all feel better, I cannot be happy knowing that they are dropping bombs on cities. I want to express my compassion, I have Ukrainian friends and the situation is tragic." He has referred to the boycott of Russian culture as something "which is unbearable to me because Russian culture has always promoted human values. The word war and the word culture are antagonistic and culture will continue to fight to defend values."
The director's intervention before journalists has been marked by the war and one of the most tense moments has been when he has been questioned about the financing of his films. And it is that both Tchaikovsky's wife and his previous film have funds from Kinoprime, the foundation created by tycoon Roman Abramovich, sanctioned for his ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Abramovich has been a patron of the arts for a long time. Thanks to him and his foundation, the best Russian auteur cinema of recent years has come forward," he defended. And he also recalled that the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, asked the president of the United States, Joe Biden, not to sanction him because he could be a key figure in the peace process.
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