The film festival was deprived of “Fairy Tales” – Kommersant FM
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In Moscow, the screening of Alexander Sokurov’s film “The Fairy Tale” was canceled: the film was supposed to complete the international film festival “Karo.Art” on Sunday, October 15. However, the organizers of the event announced a change in the program and apologized to the audience. The director himself wrote on social networks that the reason for the refusal was an order from the authorities. He regarded the actions of the Ministry of Culture as unconstitutional and compared the situation with Soviet times of censorship. Alexander Sokurov is also sure that Skazka will not be given a distribution certificate in Russia.
The events in the film take place during the Second World War, but this is a completely fictional world, said Vasily Stepanov, editor-in-chief of Session magazine. This summer he organized a screening of the film in St. Petersburg:
“The problematics in the film are as follows: the forked characters of Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, these historical figures, walk through a kind of limbo or purgatory and talk to each other and to themselves about how they can get an audience with God. The latter tells them to take another walk. That is, this is a dream film about history, like Dante’s “Human Comedy”. This is a painting-reflection of a modern classic.
If you look at the filmography of Alexander Sokurov, for quite a long time he released two or even three films a year. Then, due to the fact that he spent a lot of time teaching, a certain gap appeared.
After the film “Faust” a film about the Louvre was released, and only now – “The Fairy Tale”. It is clear that when a director of this level does not make films for a long time, there will be enormous interest in new films from him. Moreover, this film is innovative, it is made up of newsreels, it has a very interesting, it seems to me, completely avant-garde visuals. This did not happen.
It seemed to me that there was huge audience interest in this film, provoked by the fact that it had been awaited for a long time since its premiere at the Locarno festival.”
“Kommersant FM” sent a request to the Ministry of Culture and is awaiting a response. The press service of Karo, the organizer of the event, declined to comment. The film premiered at the Swiss Film Festival in the summer of 2022.
Alexander Sokurov was also invited to Cannes for this work, but he refused. According to him, his picture is too serious and will not fit into the program. The ban on showing “Fairy Tales” is not the first case like this, film critic Yegor Moskvitin recalled:
“The fact that one after another films do not receive a distribution certificate or lose them, as recently happened with the Yakut film “Aita”, which calls for some kind of camaraderie and joint survival and in no way condemns either of the two peoples, is alarming trend.
Films themselves have both creative and destructive principles. Therefore, it is very important to make sure that the films come out with a general national and professional cultural discussion around them, because then we could take the best from them and protect ourselves from the worst.
And when the films don’t appear at the box office, then there is no discussion, no reflection, self-healing or unification.”
In September 2023, the Ministry of Culture revoked the distribution certificate of the Yakut film “Aita”. Roskomnadzor also demanded that it be removed from online cinemas; the department noted that the film demonstrates inequality based on nationality.
The head of Yakutia Aisen Nikolaev, State Duma deputies and Alexander Sokurov sided with the director. The director did not find any signs of nationalism in the film and noted that such bans could ruin the Russian film industry.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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