“I will live in Russia” – Culture – Kommersant

The Locarno Festival has become a part of my life. Here I started, presented my first film “The Lonely Voice of a Man” and here, perhaps, I present my last film. Why the last one? Life is not infinite, and forces are not infinite. Our country is going through a difficult period. It is possible that directors like me will not be able to continue working. If you are not needed at home, you should be silent. I do not have a second or third citizenship, and I will live in Russia – as long as I live at all. My language is there, my students are there, and there I feel my historical responsibility, since I was destined to be born in such a country. But I will hope that I will still be able to do something, in any case, I have many creative proposals for myself.

Cinematography came of age already in the works of Alexander Dovzhenko with his unique national self-expression and fundamental discoveries in aesthetics. And yet cinema has not matured yet. The aesthetics and ethics of the entire world of fine arts and, of course, literature rise above it. They are higher and better than us, it is old and old, but still the ideal art that we look up to.

People ask me why there is no Roosevelt among the characters in the film, is this a purely European choice?

Yes, I am a European child, shaped by the culture, history and life practices of the Old World, I am part of this Old World, and Russia is also part of the Old World. The events that we touch upon in the film (two wars, a revolution) are all our domestic European affairs and illnesses.

The Americans have nothing to do with this, although they participated in the war. Let’s figure it out ourselves, and only then we will decide whether we will allow someone to interfere – those who are very far away. The ocean that separates us is actually more than an ocean.

The time when humanitarian values ​​mattered is long gone. The time has come for politicians who are essentially tacticians and have no strategic gifts. I repeat and will repeat: vote for those for whom humanitarian values ​​are more important than political ones.

Our film is compared with the Divine Comedy. You can, of course, mix everything with everything arbitrarily. But the difference is that Dante has all the issues resolved and all the villains punished. Our characters are unpunished and will not be punished for a long time. This is the difference between evolution and revolutions of the 20th century, for those who committed such, to put it mildly, unseemly acts are not punished. And those who are guilty of murder and other atrocities will have followers in great numbers. Here we need a new Dante, who will begin to create a new system of the universe and think about what to do next.

Our film is called “Fairy Tale”. A fairy tale is a phantom pain of a person and humanity. What Solzhenitsyn, Marquez and other major artists were doing. I hate propaganda, that modern form of image manipulation. I exist not in the realm of ideology, but in the realm of dramatic art.

It is important for us to understand, and this is the main thing, how the terrible Luciferian principle is born in a person. And in an ordinary person. There are no great people in politics, they are all very ordinary.

A fairy tale cannot be without life, and life cannot be without a fairy tale. But fairy tales always end well. Because, waking up or closing a book with a fairy tale, we find ourselves in a wonderful real life, and we still have the strength to overcome difficulties. A fairy tale is always optimistic, and our “Fairy Tale” is also optimistic.