ROME (AP) – Cultural response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified on Tuesday after the Cannes Film Festival said no Russian delegations were welcome this year and the Venice Film Festival announced free screenings of a film about the 2014 conflict. in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass.
The two leading European film festivals came after other high-profile art protests, including a decision by Hollywood to suspend films scheduled for release in Russia and a decision by the Munich Philharmonic to fire chief conductor Valery Gergiev. The orchestra, joined by other orchestras and festivals linked to Gergiev, cited his support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and refused to reject the invasion.
Scheduled for May, Cannes is the most global of film festivals and its international flagship pavilion village hosts more than 80 countries around the world each year.
In a statement, festival organizers said the ban on any official Russian delegation or Kremlin-linked individuals would remain “unless the assault war ends in conditions that will satisfy the Ukrainian people.”
The festival did not rule out the acceptance of films from Russia. In recent years, Cannes has shown films to directors such as Kirill Serebrennikov, although the director failed to attend. Serebrennikov is under a three-year travel ban after being accused of embezzlement by the Russian government in a case protested by the Russian artistic community in Europe.
Hollywood continued to withdraw its films from Russian cinemas. After Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. and Sony have announced they will stop distributing movies in Russia, including Warner’s long-awaited Batman, Paramount Pictures said on Tuesday. This includes upcoming releases such as “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” and “The Lost City”.
Meanwhile, the Venice Film Festival said it was organizing free screenings of “Reflection” about the conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
Screenings are scheduled for next week in Rome, Milan and Venice.
The film, which was presented at a competition in Venice last year, tells the story of a Ukrainian surgeon who was captured by Russia during the Donbass conflict in eastern Ukraine. In 2014, Russia threw its weight behind a riot in the predominantly Russian-speaking region of eastern Ukraine known as Donbass, where Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings and proclaimed the creation of “people’s republics.”
“Reflection” shows the horrors of war, as well as the surgeon’s efforts to restore his relationship after his release.
Directed by Ukrainian director Valentin Vasyanovich, whose 2019 film Atlantis is also set in eastern Ukraine and deals with similar issues of war and trauma. “Atlantis” won the award for best film in the experimental section Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival 2019, Ukraine’s advertising was Ukraine’s nominee for the Oscars.
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Earlier this week, the Venice Biennale’s art exhibition, part of the annual film festival, announced that the curator and artists of the Russian pavilion had resigned in protest of the war in Ukraine.
Last week, the European Broadcasting Union announced that Russia would not be eligible to participate in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Turin in May.
The winner of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest was Ukrainian singer Jamala, who won with a song about the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. On Tuesday, it became clear that she had fled Ukraine to Turkey with her two children.
A Crimean Tatar, Jamala told reporters in Istanbul that she never imagined that she would eventually share the same fate as her grandmother, who she said “only had 15 minutes to pack” during the 1944 forced deportations.
The singer said she left Kyiv for Ternopil, in western Ukraine, where she thought her family would be safe, but decided to move to Romania when she woke up to the sound of explosions there as well. Her husband, like all men between the ages of 18 and 60, remained in Ukraine.
Coyle reports from New York; Susan Fraser of Istanbul contributed.