‘The model of “one deciding for all” isn’t working’

Filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev explains his resignation from the Russian Oscar Committee

On Sept. 26, Russia’s Oscar Committee announced that it would not be nominating a feature film for this year’s Academy Awards. Nikita Mikhalkov, head of the Russian Cinematographers’ Union, said that “it would be senseless” to submit a film under current circumstances.

Following Mikhalkov’s announcement, Pavel Chukhray, the chair of Russia’s Oscar Committee, resigned from his post. Andrey Zvyagintsev, one of the country’s best-known directors, followed suit, resigning from the Oscar Committee and, simultaneously, from the Cinematographers’ Union and several other professional associations.

In his letter of resignation, Zvyagintsev drew parallels between the “wayward” decision-making by certain Oscar Committee members and the “deadly” pattern of unilateral decisions made by President Vladimir Putin.

The following is a translation of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s resignation letter.

My decision to leave the Oscar Committee was dictated by roughly the same reasons that the head of this commission, Pavel Chukhray, had mentioned in his letter. When the organization you’re in charge of makes a decision, and you yourself learn about it from the press — that decision not to nominate a Russian film having already been announced — this represents the outrageous voluntarism of several committee members, who have imagined that their omniscience and their wayward sense of the situation is all that it takes [to make such a decision]. The organization has around 20 members, and practically all of them learned of this event from the papers. This isn’t just odd or indiscreet — it’s as hideous as the sight of a single person sitting by the nuclear red button, while billions of others await with bated breath, wondering whether he’ll push it, or not. He’s already made two irreversible gestures — by starting a war with a one-time good neighbor, and now by staging a mass exodus of his own country’s citizens. A catastrophic in scale humanitarian disaster and its consequences are in the hands — and on the hands — of one person. In the future —not only the future of the “beautiful future Russia,” but in the future of the whole world — we must reconsider this kind of situation. The model of “one deciding for all” isn’t working; above all, it’s deadly. I haven’t the slightest desire to cooperate in any way whatsoever with such insane decisions, or to be complicit in such people’s doings and dispositions. I am leaving not only the above-mentioned organization, but also others, to which I ask that my public statement be extrapolated: the Cinematographers’ Union of the Russian Federation; the Golden Eagle Academy; and Nika Academy. I remain a Russian director and citizen, but without any academic or other membership privileges to make fateful decisions on anyone’s behalf.

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