On a sunny Friday evening in Amsterdam, Kirill Serebrennikov was feeling some pre-premiere nerves as guests started to arrive at the Dutch National Opera.
“Of course it’s different. Everything is different when you do it in person,” the celebrated Russian stage and screen director said in an interview an hour before the first performance of Der Freischütz.
For Serebrennikov, one of Russia’s most prominent cultural figures whose stage work has been produced across Europe, it was the first time in more than four years he had been able to attend the premiere of an opera that he had directed.
Beginning in August 2017, Serebrennikov spent nearly two years under house arrest in Moscow and was later convicted of embezzling 133m rubles (about £1.7m) in a case that many have called politically motivated and part of a wider crackdown on artistic freedom. The high-profile court case resulted in a suspended sentence for the director in June 2020 and a one-and-a-half-year travel ban.
Despite initially being restricted to his flat, Serebrennikov continued to work, using his defence team to smuggle instructions to theatres abroad when, at first, he wasn’t allowed to use the internet and later overseeing rehearsals through his screen.
“That digital way of work was interesting at times. You sit somewhere far away, giving instructions to people on monitors, and they listen to you fearfully, without opposing too much,” Serebrennikov said, wearing lightly tinted sunglasses and a baseball cap. “In person, it’s more interesting but actually more difficult.”
But the director’s buzz about his upcoming opera quickly faded as his attention turned to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which passed the 100-day mark last week.
“Overall, of course, I’m in a very worried, gloomy mood,” he said.
Despite frequent run-ins with the authorities, the director never fled Russia. But after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Serebrennikov decided to leave for Berlin at the end of March. He has since become a vocal critic of the war.
“How can I not get enraged over what happens when Ukrainians are dying because of the Russian bombs? When cities get wiped off the map? When civilians get killed?. How the hell can one not speak out. How? How can I call this murder a special military operation?”
Mentally, he said, he had prepared himself for not going back any time soon. “I have proclaimed ‘fuck the war’ so many times now. We both know that is a criminal offence,” he said, referring to new draconian laws that have criminalised anti-war dissent.
His first work stop in Europe was Cannes, where he premiered Tchaikovsky’s Wife. The film focuses on Antonina Miliukova, the wife of Russia’s most famous composer, as she descends into delirium after realising her husband is gay, a mostly taboo subject in Russia.
Serebrennikov does not expect the film to be screened in Russia in the foreseeable future. “They, those in power, dislike everything about this film. The director is wrong, the way Tchaikovsky is portrayed is wrong,” he said.
Despite receiving a standing ovation in Cannes, not everyone was happy to see him invited to the festival, with some members of the Ukrainian film industry calling for a total boycott of Russian films.
Serebrennikov said he “understood” why people were demanding a boycott but disagreed with the idea. “Should we shoot ourselves in the leg out of solidarity? What is the benefit of that?
“Yes, now is not the time for pieces about Russian dolls, balalaikas, folk dancing. But there should always be space for clever, intricate, honest Russian culture and human stories. We don’t do any propaganda, anything praising the imperial ambitions of the government, all that shit.”
Serebrennikov said calls to boycott Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Tchaikovsky would only play into the Kremlin’s narrative, pointing to recent statements made by Putin, who has accused the west of “cancelling” Russian culture. But it was not just the director’s presence that raised some eyebrows in France. At one press conference in Cannes, Serebrennikov called for the lifting of western sanctions on Roman Abramovich, one of the investors behind his latest film.
Asked about his public defence of a man considered by many to be an enabler of Putin’s regime, Serebrennikov said he was merely repeating the words of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who in March asked the US president, Joe Biden, to hold off on imposing sanctions on the former Chelsea owner because the Ukrainians felt he might be useful in their talks with the Russians.
When pressed on the issue again, Serebrennikov said it would have been “dishonest” for him to stay quiet.
“It was important for me to speak out. Abramovich has helped Russian contemporary culture a lot. He literally helped Russian artists survive,” he said, revealing that the oligarch paid for the medical treatment of the Oscar-nominated director Andrey Zvyagintsev in Germany.
Zvyagintsev spent weeks in a medically induced coma last year after contracting coronavirus.
Serebrennikov’s staunch defence of Abramovich shows some of the ways in which the very rich and powerful have sought to navigate Putin’s Russia, becoming both patrons of critical art and financial backers of the Kremlin regime.
For years, Serebrennikov and his Gogol Center, a backwater theatre that he turned into Moscow’s most vibrant cultural institution, were also forced to turn to government financing to continue operating. But Serebrennikov swiftly rejects any suggestion he ever profited from or compromised with the authorities, pointing to the years of persecution he and the Gogol Center have faced.
“We didn’t receive grants, we received problems. We received criminal cases and investigations. We were on every single blacklist,” he said. “They have been wanting to shut down Gogol Center for years. With the war, I am worried they finally will. This war is a tragedy for Ukraine and a suicide for modern, open Russia.”
Seeing Serebrennikov rage about the war, it was easy to forget the director was in Amsterdam for the premiere of his version of Der Freischütz.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the avant garde director turned the classic German opera by Carl Maria von Weber into a daring satire of the harsh realities of the modern opera industry, featuring music by Tom Waits.
He admitted it was sometimes hard to focus on directing the opera as the war continued. “I was doing it somewhat heavy-heartedly because I can’t isolate myself from what is going on outside. But I hope it turned out to be a funny, entertaining piece,” he said, as he excused himself and departed backstage.
Three and a half hours later, Serebrennikov emerged at the curtain call to a thunderous standing ovation. It was clear that, in Amsterdam, his talents were still very much in demand.
