No Russian film will compete for the prestigious trophy at next year’s Oscars. The Russian Film Academy apparently decides on the short official channels. There is a resignation.
The Russian Film Academy has announced that it will not submit any works for the “Best Foreign Film” category for the upcoming Oscars on March 12, 2023. The decision can be seen as another sign of the growing rift between the two nations since Vladimir Putin gave the order to attack Ukraine earlier this year.
The chairman of Russia’s Oscar nominations committee announced his resignation in a letter Tuesday after calling the decision “illegal” and “made behind his back”. “The leadership of the [film] academy [of Russia] has unilaterally decided not to nominate any Russian film for the Oscar nomination,” Pavel Chuchray wrote in a letter published by the state news agency TASS.
It is the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russia has not submitted a film for the Best International Film category. Russia won the trophy in 1994 for director Nikita Mikhalkov’s “Burnt by the Sun.”
The 76-year-old Mikhalkov, who heads the Russian Filmmakers’ Union, has now become a vocal supporter of Putin and has emerged as one of the country’s most vocal pro-war advocates. Even before the boycott was officially announced, Mikhalkov told Tass that Russia had nothing to gain by attending this year’s Oscars.
“It seems to me that there is simply no point in choosing a film that represents Russia in a country that in reality denies the existence of Russia,” he said – and suggested creating an equivalent award for countries in the post-Soviet space instead. Most recently, Russian films that were demonstrably financed by the government were banned from various film festivals. On the other hand, most organizers rejected a general boycott of Russian works.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further divided the country’s cultural scene, and many prominent directors have emigrated. Among them are Kantemir Balagov and Kira Kovalenko, two directors whose films were submitted by the Russian Film Academy for the 2019 and 2021 Oscars. According to a report in the English “Guardian”, Russia has now put Vitaly Mansky, one of the country’s best-known documentary filmmakers and critic of the invasion of Ukraine, on a wanted list.
