Acclaimed Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev has directly appealed to President Vladimir Putin to end the 'senseless' war in Ukraine, continuing a public confrontation that began at the Cannes Film Festival. In a message sent through official channels on Tuesday, the exiled filmmaker urged Putin to heed the Russian people's desire for peace.
Zvyagintsev's Plea
'Except for the limbs torn off from your fellow citizens in the name of an illusory goal, except for the massacre of young people that the country needs to build life and the future – nothing good is on the horizon if we don't stop,' Zvyagintsev wrote in his message to the Kremlin. The director, who won the Grand Prix for his new film Minotaur at Cannes, had previously appealed to Putin on stage, urging him to 'stop this butchery' and acknowledging that the Russian leader was unlikely to watch the ceremony personally.
Kremlin Rejection
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the request to relay the anti-war message, stating, 'I, for one, will not do it. I do not think that anyone else will do it.' Peskov argued that Zvyagintsev had no right to call for peace because he had never condemned the alleged 'massacre in the Donbas,' a narrative used by Russian disinformation to justify the invasion.
In response, Zvyagintsev countered that while he may lack a voice, so do 'a hundred million Russian citizens,' as Putin has 'never heard their voices.' He labeled the Kremlin's tactic of silencing critics with the question 'Where have you been for the last eight years?' as 'hypocritical.' The director insisted the only rational course is 'to put an end to this war as ruthless as it is senseless.'
Reactions and Context
The Kremlin has not yet responded to Zvyagintsev's latest message. Meanwhile, his Cannes speech drew criticism from Ukrainian commentators, who saw it as part of the 'appeal to the tsar' tradition, where Russian opposition figures beg for change rather than demand it, and equated the lives of Russian soldiers with Ukrainian civilians.
Minotaur, Zvyagintsev's first film since surviving a severe Covid-19 infection and going into exile in France, premiered at Cannes to positive reviews. The film is an adaptation of Claude Chabrol's 1969 erotic thriller The Unfaithful Wife, set in the fictional Russian city of Krasnoborsk. It follows a business executive on the verge of laying off employees to be drafted into the Ukraine war effort when he discovers his wife's infidelity.
