Director Lokshin: going to the cinema to see “The Master and Margarita” became a “silent protest”

In an interview with The Times, the director made a number of anti-Russian statements

The film “The Master and Margarita,” which earned two billion rubles at the box office, turns out to be a “silent protest” against the Russian authorities. This is the opinion of Mikhail Lokshin, who admitted in an interview with the British newspaper The Times that he will not return to Russia because of “pro-Kremlin supporters.”

The film adaptation of “The Master and Margarita”, which has received a lot of criticism and admiration since the start of distribution, is giving more and more informational reasons. Another revelation was the “confession” of Mikhail Lokshin to The Times. In it, the director spoke about the supposedly true mission of the film. Unfortunately, we were unable to gain full access to the material posted on the publication’s official website – the British only open it when paying in foreign currency.

But according to a publicly available excerpt, Lokshin said that going to the movies to watch his film “became a kind of silent protest, a way to express my disagreement” with Russian politics. The director also assured that he would return to Russia only if the regime “changes” there. He faces arrest on Russian territory, where “Stalin’s purges of artists” are being carried out—hereinafter quoted.

Let us note that from the first words of the publication one can trace the negatively ironic attitude of the publication towards Moscow:

– Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic novel did not pass the test of Stalin’s censorship, and now pro-Kremlin hardliners are opposing the film adaptation, calling for the director to be prosecuted as a terrorist (we quote from an English-language source).

The news has already received a lot of comments on social networks. “Too much honor… The film is like a film. What does protest have to do with it? Well, it’s just fashionable now for overly liberal-minded people to make mountains out of molehills,” writes a web user with the nickname Snusmumrik

Let us recall that in 2022, in a conversation with The New York Times, Lokshin complained that the filmmakers at that time did not receive funds from the state for post-production. “We found ourselves somewhat censored in Russia. Also, we cannot seek financing abroad, since this is a Russian film. This is a rather absurd situation,” the creator of the film said at the time.

As we can see, Lokshin’s pro-Ukrainian posts on social networks in January 2024 were not an accident. Having quickly deleted provocative publications that came to the attention of the patriotic public, he did not abandon his views. This was perfectly demonstrated by yesterday’s interview with The Times.