The most successful Yakut film was banned for nationalism

Roskomnadzor actually imposed a ban on showing the Yakut film “Aita” in Russia: Russian video services were ordered to remove the film from their film libraries. The reason is the alleged propaganda of nationalism discovered in Ait. Good news, bad news? The news, like most news and phenomena of our harsh but interesting era, is complex, multi-layered, ambiguous.

Let’s start with the good half: the good news is that the authorities are on alert, the authorities are vigilant, protecting us from information that is dangerous for political stability, for our fragile civil peace. But like any struggle for good against bad, this one is also not without certain costs and side effects. As in any struggle, it is also easy to go too far.

“We wanted the best, but it turned out as always” – many processes and phenomena of our socio-political life fit into this classic Chernomyrdin formula. And there is a serious suspicion that the ban on the film “Aita” falls into the same category.

For reference: the film, positioned as a detective thriller, is the most successful project in the history of Yakut national cinema. Including in commercial terms: the film’s budget is 4 million rubles, box office receipts are more than 26 million. That is, despite the ban, it has already paid for itself many times over.

An even rarer case: a combination of undoubted artistic merit with commercial success. At the “Winter” auteur film festival held in December last year, “Aity” director Stepan Burnashev received the prize for best director, and Innokenty Lukovtsev, who played the main character in the film, the head of the village police department, received the prize for best actor.

By the way, the film’s distribution certificate has not been revoked. But this changes little: “Aita” was released on the country’s movie screens on March 30 of this year and, accordingly, by the time of the ban it had already disappeared from them.

“Roskomnadzor identified destructive information in the content of the feature film “Aita” that contradicts the principles of the unity of the peoples of Russia,” the department’s explanation reads. “The film demonstrates the inequality of persons based on nationality: the positive aspects of heroes of one nationality are contrasted with the emphatically negative traits of heroes of another nationality. Dissemination of such information audiovisual services are unacceptable.”

All clear? No, nothing is clear. For those who managed to watch “Aita” – your humble servant is among these lucky ones – such a verdict is, to put it mildly, bewildering.

The film takes place in our days. The scene is a small Yakut village, cut off from the “mainland” by mud: incessant rains have washed away the dirt roads, communication is only possible by river. 16-year-old schoolgirl Aita commits suicide and dies in the hospital, leaving a suicide note: “Afonya, I hate you!” An autopsy reveals that the deceased girl was pregnant.

There is only one Afonya in the village, Afanasy – a young employee of the local police department. Russian. Among other things, Afanasy, to his misfortune, turned out to be one of the last people to see Aita before her tragic step: he took her home in a police Niva after the police dispersed the group of teenagers in which she was. Suspicion naturally falls on him.

Afanasy claims that he had nothing to do with it, but no one believes him. He is a stranger, a “newcomer.” And besides, with not the best reputation – one of those about whom they say “tumbleweeds” and “wind in the head.” His boss, Nikolai, doesn’t believe Afona either. But he believes that everything should happen according to the law.

Passions quickly heat up. People are sure that there will be no fair trial: “The cops will always beat their own.” A group of village residents armed with hunting rifles, led by the girl’s father, Ayaal, demands that the police hand over Afonya to them for execution. And when they receive a refusal, they begin to storm the police station. After the first, unsuccessful attack, the attackers decide to use a tractor as a ram…

The climax comes moments before the tractor driven by Ayaal is about to crash into the police station building. It turns out that the policeman Afanasy really had nothing to do with the death of the girl: Afonya, because of whom she committed suicide, is her lover from a neighboring village. Her peer, Yakut.

Well, where is the contrast between the positive aspects of one nationality “emphasized by the negative traits of heroes of another nationality”? Even the most picky eye will not be able to detect such a contrast: none of the nationalities appearing in the film, neither Russians nor Yakuts, are shown either from an emphatically positive or from a purely negative side.

It should also be noted that in the clash between the “little people” and the “state Leviathan” shown in “Aina”, it is not the “little people” who are right. The truth here is on the side of Leviathan, his servants who did not allow the “people’s court”. In Russian auteur cinema, you will agree, this does not happen very often.

“I can’t understand where in the film they saw the disunity of peoples,” the film’s director Stepan Burnashev (interview with TASS) is perplexed and perplexed. “In the plot, if we take it globally, there are no negative characters. There are actions and problems that affect the development of the plot. History “It’s precisely about the fact that dividing people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ can lead to tragedy. In any situation, even a tragic one, you need to be able to find the strength to conduct a dialogue in order to get to the bottom of the truth.”

The ostentatious, showcase, official friendship of peoples, which silences problems and prohibits talking about conflicts and contradictions, is much more harmful to international peace than the most poignant film. As evidenced by the reaction to the Aina ban: to say that in Yakutia it was perceived negatively means to say nothing.

In a word, Leviathan had a good chance to prove that he is wiser, more perspicacious, more adequate, more flexible than people think about him. But he failed the test once again.