Replying to Screen’s questions over email, Sokurov insists that the film is not intended as an allegory about today’s political leaders. We could not buy expensive computer programmes we used those that were publicly available,” the director says of the painstaking CGI work which went into the project. We had extremely modest financial resources. Between scenes of the dictators clowning around, we are given hints of the immense death and destruction they have left in their wake. He is also keen to tell Stalin that he is a skunk and that he “smells of sheep”.Īt one stage, Sokurov thought of calling the film Laughter And Tears. Looking around heaven, Stalin admits it is beautiful but says “the Kremlin is better.”Ĭhurchill, meanwhile, frets that he has lost his darling Clementine, while Hitler is consumed with regret that he didn’t burn London properly when he had the chance. “Have you the snots?” a fellow dictator asks him. The tone of the new film is very different to that of Sokurov’s sombre “men of power” biopics: Moloch (1998) about Hitler Taurus (2001) about Lenin’s last days and The Sun (2005), following Emperor Hirohito at the end of the Second World War.Īt times, Sokurov seems to be lampooning the dictators in Fairytale. First, as a director, then as a Russian… Or vice versa?” Boycotts and urinals At least now I know for sure – I am very disliked in Cannes. My previous work Francofonia has the same fate in Cannes. Did this situation surprise me? Well, no. “A few hours before the screening the Cannes directorate cancelled the session. “It seems to me that Cannes was afraid of the Fairytale,” he claims. Sokurov originally hoped to screen Fairytale, which was produced by Nikolay Yankin, in Cannes but the film wasn’t selected. “Get up, you idler, get dressed,” Stalin taunts Jesus, who is lying on a bed in pain, at the start of the film. The film plays like a cross between one of Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python sketches and Dante’s Divine Comedy. Hitler is voiced by Lothar Deeg and Tim Ettelt while Stalin is voiced by Vakhtang Kuchava, Mussolini by Fabio Mastrangelo and Churchill by Alexander Sagabashi and Michael Gibson. Sokurov has recruited actors to voice their words (in their own languages) but uses real-life imagery of the dictators and political leaders. Napoleon also puts in an appearance, as does Jesus Christ. Its main characters are Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Churchill, who are stranded together in a monochrome purgatory. Putin reprimanded him directly for remarks Sokurov made about Russia’s “very complicated” foreign policy.įairytale is likely to take audiences expecting an earnest arthouse film by surprise. On the other, he has been critical of Putin and was caught in a very public spat with the Russian president last December at a meeting of the country’s Human Rights Council. On the one hand, he is revered and is a “People’s Artist of the Russian Federation”. It’s not clear why – he claimed at the time it was due to his criticism of the war in Ukraine – but the 71-year-old director, whose credits include Russian Ark, Faust, Moloch and Mother And Son, occupies an ambivalent position in contemporary Russia.

When Sokurov tried to visit Milan in June for an arts conference, he was prevented from leaving the country by Russian border guards, who confiscated his passport. Since then his festival publicist has confirmed today (Friday) that he is safely across the border and en route to Switzerland. I’m interested in it myself… Both the first and the second are very angry and nervous people,” the director replied when asked about his travel plans by Screen earlier this week.

“This question will soon be answered by Russian and Estonian border guards. Alexander Sokurov’s Fairytale world premieres in competition at the Locarno Film Festival this weekend but the Golden Lion-winning director, a towering figure in contemporary Russian cinema, has only just discovered that he will be allowed to travel to the screening.

Hand of fate voice actor