Director defends Currentzis at Venice as Ukraine criticizes DAU — SkimNews
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- Ilya Khrzhanovsky premiered his film DAU at the Venice film festival on Wednesday, with Greek-Russian star conductor Teodor Currentzis cast as Nobel-winning quantum physicist Lev Landau
- Ukraine's foreign ministry had criticized the film's inclusion in the lineup because Currentzis continues to live and work in Russia and has never publicly denounced Putin's war
- Khrzhanovsky said "everyone pays for his own choice" when asked about Currentzis, while noting the director himself renounced his Russian citizenship over the invasion and lives in exile in Germany
- Currentzis did not attend the Venice premiere due to a "last-minute emergency," though Khrzhanovsky called him "one of the greatest conductors of our time"
- Pressed on his own position, Khrzhanovsky said he wishes "peace and success for the Ukrainian government ... to save the country and to win this war"
- DAU was originally shot between 2008 and 2011 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, as a gargantuan experimental project with 400 principal roles and approximately 10,000 extras — long before the full-scale invasion
- The project has been dogged for more than a decade by misconduct allegations, including reports that on-set "KGB officers" — played by real-life ex-KGB officers — were allowed to control and punish the rest of the cast
Why it matters: Khrzhanovsky navigated the controversy by personalizing it — renouncing his own Russian citizenship while insisting Currentzis's silence is "his choice" — a stance that defuses Ukrainian criticism without disowning his star. The film's origin in Kharkiv sharpens the contradiction: a Ukrainian city is the literal backdrop for a project now entangled in debates over Russian cultural figures' wartime complicity.
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