The Venice International Film Festival, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, is among the world’s most influential cinematic platforms, and its choices carry real weight in what the international cultural community recognizes and legitimizes.
It is for this reason that the inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’sfilm “DAU” in the Main Competition of Venezia 83, where it will compete for the Golden Lion, raises profound concern. At a time when Russia continues its war of aggression against Ukraine, systematically destroying our cities, cultural heritage and national identity, granting one of the most prestigious cultural platforms to a project linked to the Russian state and its influence networks sends a deeply troubling message.
We fully respect the Festival’s curatorial independence and artistic judgment. At the same time, culture cannot be viewed in isolation from politics or assessed solely on artistic merit, regardless of who finances it or whose interests it ultimately serves.
Russia has long used culture as an instrument of state policy and hybrid warfare. For the Kremlin, culture is a way to restore to sanctioned figures the respectability that politics has taken from them; to legitimize its presence where its tanks cannot reach; and to appropriate the history of the very lands it seeks to erase. Every prestigious platform that accepts a Kremlin-financed project becomes, for Moscow, a test — of how far International institutions are prepared to tolerate Russia`s crimes, and of what they will call "neutral" while the war of aggression against Ukraine continues.
Together with our international partners, Ukraine has consistently drawn attention to this reality, including in March, when we raised concerns over Russia’s return to the Venice Biennale. Subsequent developments have only reinforced this position. On 21 July 2026, the European Commission emphasized that EU-funded cultural events «should safeguard democratic values... which are not respected in today's Russia."
A careful study of background of the «DAU» film illustrates our point. It should be recalled that the project was financed by Sergei Adoniev, a Russian businessman sanctioned by both the United States and Ukraine and credibly linked to Putin’s regime. The film’s director, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, headed a cultural project funded by Kremlin-connected Russian oligarchs that was widely criticized by Ukrainian and international intellectuals. The film’s lead actor, Teodor Currentzis, accepted Russian citizenship granted by Vladimir Putin and built his musical career through funding from sanctioned Russian state banks and state-backed cultural institutions. These ties have already led a number of European cultural institutions to cancel his engagements and terminate collaborations with him.
It should be also noted that «DAU» was filmed in Kharkiv between 2008 and 2011, yet portrays a Ukrainian city exclusively through a Soviet lens, disregarding its own history and identity. Such a portrayal reflects the same imperial narrative that Russia continues to impose through its war of aggression against Ukraine.
The fact that the film was directed by a filmmaker from the aggressor state and shot in a city now subjected to constant Russian missile, drone and bomb attacks makes its selection particularly painful. Therefore, by choosing to showcase this work, the Festival risks implicitly legitimizing Russia’s attempts to erase and appropriate Ukraine’s history and cultural identity.
We are not calling for the censorship of culture or of artists. We are calling upon the Venice International Film Festival and the wider cultural community to recognize how Russia weaponizes culture as an instrument of its hybrid war, and to stop mistaking Kremlin-backed cultural projects for politically neutral ones.
We also call upon all respected international cultural platforms to exercise appropriate due diligence to ensure that cultural instruments of a state that continues to wage a war of aggression against Ukraine are not legitimized under the guise of artistic freedom.