Film director Alexander Sokurov criticises Russian censorship in rare public rebuke to Putin

One of Russia’s most celebrated film directors, Alexander Sokurov, has spoken critically about contemporary Russia during his first appearance before the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights since 2021, Russian independent media outlet Agentstvo reported on Wednesday. 

In comments made in front of Vladimir Putin, who was attending the meeting of the hand-picked advisory body via video link, Sokurov called Russia’s notorious “foreign agents” law “humiliating” and said that it prevented people from “developing and continuing to exist”.

“Every week, we watch with concern to see who has become a foreign agent, or how these terrifying definitions are applied,” Sokurov said, adding: “They just name them, make various claims against a person, and then that’s it, it’s all over. It’s unclear what to do with this next.”

He also railed against ever-tighter censorship in the country, saying that Russia still didn’t “know how to have political discussions with young people, with older schoolchildren, with students. The country is afraid of these discussions,” before noting that even his latest film had been banned in his homeland.

“What is the reason for banning my film? I got no explanation. When this happened during the Soviet era, they at least always explained to me why my film could not be shown in the Soviet Union. The same was explained to Tarkovsky — why his film would not be shown in the Soviet Union.”

“In general, the absence of a procedure for political discussions, the absence of a procedure for open, calm, non-hysterical discussion of the processes taking place in the country” dealt “a very serious blow to the fates of many people.”

Putin responded by repeating many of the points that he’d made earlier in the meeting, though he did address Sokurov’s criticism of the “foreign agents” law by stressing that it was needed to combat foreign influence, and was little more than a direct copy of an equivalent US law. He also pledged to find out who had banned the director’s most recent film. 

Known for his meditative films that often retell key parts of Russian history, Sokurov is one of Russia’s most famous living directors and is best known for his 2002 single-shot feature film Russian Ark, as well as 2011’s Faust, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His 2022 film Fairytale, in which Stalin, Churchill, Mussolini, and Hitler meet in purgatory, was refused distribution in Russia. 

The Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights is a consultative body created to advise Vladimir Putin on human rights in Russia. With some 47 members, all of whom are personally appointed by the president, the body has become increasingly acquiescent in recent years, with nearly all members who have been critical of the Kremlin being dismissed. 

Indeed, on Tuesday, it emerged that Putin had removed the former director of Moscow’s Gulag History Museum, Roman Romanov, from the body. In late 2024, Romanov refused to censor an exhibition on Soviet repression, leading to his dismissal from the only state museum in Russia dedicated to Soviet-era repressions.