When Khrzhanovsky’s colossal immersive project on the horrors of the Soviet Union launched in 2019, it caused uproar in east and west alike. Now, he plans to release its ‘mother film’, to expose the ‘huge danger’ the world faces today
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n late July this year, a few days before his 50th birthday, the exiled Russian film-maker Ilya Khrzhanovsky was landed with a 50,000 rouble (£450) fine by the Presnensky District Court of Moscow. This punishment was ostensibly for a Kafkaesque administrative offence relating to “procedures for the activities of foreign agents”. Khrzhanovsky himself thinks it was a symbolic birthday warning from the Russian authorities that he is still on their radar.
“It’s clear it is absolute nonsense,” Khrzhanovsky says. “I will not pay it. I am not a Russian citizen and I don’t want to pay any money to the Russian state.” He renounced his Russian citizenship last year, and is now a British, German and Israeli citizen.
Also last year, Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent turned politician who became deputy chair of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, called Khrzhanovsky a “master traitor”, and accused him of “sabotage against Russia”. That’s when Khrzhanovsky was first given the status of “foreign agent” – a label widely used to target critics of the Putin regime.
