After weeks of criticism from Ukrainian activists and officials, Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera defended the selection of filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky's film DAU in an extensive message published on Instagram on Wednesday.
Barbera described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as "bloody and cruel" and said that critics of Venice had attempted to "construct a castle of accusations based on false premises and manipulation of reality in order to attack the Biennale and an invited film competing". He described the criticism as "petty and unacceptable".
"DAU is not a Russian film; it is not propaganda in favour of Putin; it is a film denouncing totalitarian regimes and their intrusion into the lives of citizens in order to limit their freedom," Barbera wrote. He noted that it is "the work of a Russian dissident who was included on the regime's blacklists as a terrorist and enemy of the State, a filmmaker who has taken a stance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the beginning".
The head of Venice questioned his critics: "Why then this inexplicable short-circuit to the detriment of a film that the prosecutors apparently have not yet seen? Why turn the Biennale into yet another target of a free and unjustified attack?" He suggested that the attacks on the Biennale were due to the event having remained as "one of the few defenders in the world of freedom of expression, regardless of geographic origin and nationality".
Following Venice's programming announcement earlier in the month, Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Culture and Embassy of Ukraine in Italy issued a joint statement expressing deep concern over the inclusion of DAU in the festival's main competition. The statement noted: "At a time when Russia continues its war of aggression against Ukraine, systematically destroying cities, cultural heritage and national identity, offering one of the world's most prestigious cultural platforms to a project linked to the Russian state sends a deeply troubling signal".
