The Russian filmmaker, refugee in Berlin, returns, in an interview with the “world”, on the particular conditions of filming his film, affected by the pandemic, censorship and his incarceration.
Interviews collected by Jacques Mandelbaum
Incredible fate that that of Kirill Serebrennikov. An explosive cocktail all by itself. Russian Jewish father. Polono-Ukrainian mother. Born in Rostov-sur-le-Don (Russia), fifty-three years ago. Add, over time, a salative firmed physicist, polymorphic artist (theater, cinema, opera), inveterate agitator, homosexual and claimed democrat. Freedom, diversity, refusal of identity assignment and limited patriotism. Everything that Russian power abhorred. It had to go wrong. He found himself accused of embezzlement, assigned to house in 2017, sentenced to three years in prison suspended in 2020. He escaped the Russian jail in March 2022. The release of Tchaikovski’s wife, striking portrait of An alienation, is equivalent to the director to a release.
You thought in 2013 of the Tchaikovski project. Why was he not at the time and how did he have evolved since?
Because the project damaged the musician’s monument as the Russian government wishes today. We prefer monuments to human beings in my country. In truth, the character – and the status – of Tchaikovski in Russia is so complex, he has evolved so much over time, that he can nourish not one but ten films. Mine offers only a vision angle, that of its tormented relationships with its wife because of his homosexuality. But it must be understood that at the time his music, even though he was the first Russian musician to become famous in the West, was not considered Russian in Russia.
suffering And the blind love of this woman invite to consider the film as a powerful metaphor for the alienation of the Russian people to a power that has never stopped bleeding it …
The film is a mirror, all interpretations are obviously welcome, and yours, in the current context, deserves reflection. But, honestly, I never thought, by writing the film, to the woman of Tchaikovski as an incarnation of the Russian people. I have rather seen her, when she was so far considered as a silly little bourgeois, as a kind of tragic character. The fault is the responsibility of the musician, who will have estimated useful for the progress of his career to get married, and the case simply turned into a nightmare.
You are witnessing today, finally free, at The release of a film written and shot under oppression. Isn’t that a strange feeling?
It is all long that the strangeness accompanied us. We shot the film during the pandemic, fear in the stomach. When we have finished it, laws strengthening censorship had been promulgated in Russia which made its exploitation impossible. A large part of the filmed images then found on the internet, undoubtedly because of the secret services, to discredit me. Then the war broke out, and I was accused, during the presentation of the film in the West, of making Russian propaganda!
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