American filmmaker Woody Allen has provoked a strong diplomatic protest from Ukraine following his online appearance at the Moscow International Film Week, which ran from August 23rd to 27th. His remarks, which praised Russian cinema and life in Moscow and St. Petersburg, were condemned by Kyiv as a “shame.”
The nearly ninety-year-old director accepted an invitation from the event’s organizers to address a Moscow audience, participating via video link in a dialogue with Russian director Fyodor Bondarchuk. Allen mentioned that he would not be opposed to visiting Russia in person. During the discussion, he recalled meeting his interlocutor’s father, Sergei Bondarchuk, a People’s Artist of the USSR who won the 1968 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for ‘War and Peace.’ Allen noted he had watched the entire seven-hour epic in a single day.
The four-time Oscar winner also reflected on his past travels to Moscow and, during the Soviet era, to what was then Leningrad—now St. Petersburg. He described his experience in the Baltic city at that time as “not very pleasant,” but stated that “everything changed” after the fall of the Soviet Union. Allen added that if a Russian producer were to offer him a collaborative project, he would consider a script about “how good life is in Moscow and St. Petersburg.”
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the director’s decision to take part in the Moscow event. In a statement, it said, “Woody Allen’s participation in the Moscow International Film Week is a shame and an insult to the sacrifice of Ukrainian actors and directors killed or injured by Russian war criminals in their ongoing war against Ukraine.” The ministry further asserted that by participating in a festival that gathers supporters and voices aligned with President Vladimir Putin, Allen has chosen to “turn a blind eye” to Moscow’s atrocities.
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