Russian director and director Kirill Serebrennikov was given a three-year suspended sentence on Friday June 26 in a controversial embezzlement case. “The rehabilitation of Serebrennikov is possible without any real penalty” deprivation of liberty, said judge Olessya Mendeleeva, who also imposed a ban on directing any cultural organization, a fine and three years of probation. The prosecution had requested six years in prison.
” No comment “, said the person concerned after reading the judgment.
According to the judge, Kirill Serebrennikov was guilty of embezzling subsidies for personal enrichment amounting to 129 million rubles (1.65 million euros). Two other defendants in this case, Iouri Itine and Konstantin Malobrodski, were given suspended sentences of two and three years respectively.
This dossier, which started three years ago, is considered by the supporters of the director as a test of artistic freedom in Russia. Upon his arrival at the Mechtchanski court in Moscow, Kirill Serebrennikov was greeted by the applause of hundreds of his supporters, kept at a distance from the building by metal barriers.
House arrest
Kirill Serebrennikov, 50, artistic director of the Gogol Center, a famous Moscow theater, was arrested in August 2017 on the set in Saint Petersburg of his film Summer. He was taken to Moscow and then placed under house arrest until April 2019.
Many Russian and foreign cultural figures have expressed support for him, believing that his art, contrary to the conservatism of the Russian authorities, may have made him the enemy behind his setbacks.
During his house arrest, he completed the assembly of Summer, a film about the life of Soviet rocker Viktor Tsoï, awarded in 2018 in Cannes.
In September 2019, the Russian justice system released the artist and sent the file back to the prosecution, deeming it incomplete. But new expertise concluded in early June that the director and his team had received an overpayment of about 129 million rubles in state aid, taking the opposite view from a previous expertise.
“There is no evidence of dishonest behavior on my part”, Kirill Serebrennikov said on Monday, accusing investigators of doing « pression » on the main prosecution witness, the former accountant of 7e studio, a troupe he founded.
A “fabricated affair”
For his supporters, he pays for his freedom of creation and his sometimes daring plays, mixing politics, sexuality and religion, in a country where the authorities are pushing for a strong return of “Traditional values” conservative. Some 3,000 cultural figures had petitioned the culture ministry on Monday to drop the charges, alleging a “Business that was fabricated”.
“The readiness of the state to charge him (…) appears to be a barely veiled means of retaliation against Serebrennikov’s political critics and to send a frightening message to artists who have no choice but to give up political critics to benefit from public funds ”, have denounced several international organizations in a press release.
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