MoMI Will Address the Urgent Case of Oleg Sentsov
The case of Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov has provoked an outcry within the international film community, with Pedro Almodóvar, Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, Ken Loach, Alexandr Sokurov, Andrey Zvyagintsev, and others publicly calling for Russia to set him free from a high-security prison near the Arctic Circle. Sentsov’s troubles with the authorities came to a head in 2014 when he dropped plans to shoot a followup to his FIPRESCI Prize-winning debut feature, Gamer, in order to join the wave of demonstrations in Kiev against the Ukrainian government’s decision to opt for closer ties with Russia than with Europe. He was eventually arrested, charged with planning terrorist attacks, and given a sentence of twenty years. Sentsov denies the specific charges but does not deny delivering food and supplies to the Ukrainian forces who fought the Russian invasion of Crimea that eventually led to the annexation of the peninsula. Since May 14, Sentsov has been on a hunger strike, protesting the incarceration of over sixty Ukrainian political prisoners and demanding their release—but not his own.
Earlier this month, Masha Gessen, whose most recent book is The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, wrote for the New Yorker about Sentov’s standoff with the authorities, which may well end with the infuriatingly tragic death of the Ukrainian filmmaker. On Saturday, Gessen will be at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image to take part in a discussion with Estonian producer Max Tuula following a screening of Askold Kurov’s 2017 documentary The Trial: The State of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov. The event has just been added to the lineup of the Museum’s ongoing, monthlong series Putin’s Russia: A 21st Century Film Mosaic.
