The Serbian film-maker Emir Kusturica has claimed his latest movie was turned down by the Cannes film festival over his support for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Kusturica, twice a winner of the festival’s top Palme d’Or prize, said he blamed political bias for the failure of his new film On the Milky Road to make the 2016 official selection.
“Lately, politics has more and more often interfered with the way the Cannes film festival works,” the director, actor and musician told the Russian News Service, in comments made public by the Hollywood Reporter. “I have suspicions that someone gave an order that my film shouldn’t be accepted.”
On the Milky Road stars the director himself, as well as the Italian screen icon Monica Bellucci. Kusturica revealed he had submitted his movie a day late for this year’s festival, which takes place between 11 and 22 May. But the film-maker said he did not believe his own tardiness had inspired the Cannes chiefs’ decision, because such factors had never been a problem before. “The film was submitted, but no one even watched it,” he said.
The director, who won the Palme d’Or in 1985 for When Father Was Away on Business and a decade later for Underground, has been a vocal supporter of Putin in recent years. He was banned from performing in Ukraine last year after declaring his backing for the Russian president’s policies in the former Soviet republic. Kusturica has shown no remorse: he opened a Paris show alongside his band No Smoking Orchestra with the Russian national anthem last week.
The Serbian film-maker has previously been regarded as one of the Cannes film festival’s “usual suspects”. He was president of the Palme d’Or jury in 2005 and returned six years later to oversee the Un Certain Regard competition.
On the Milky Road centres on three key stages in the life of the same man: his experiences at war, a later romance with a woman who hopes to save him, and his final reclusive existence as a monk looking back on his turbulent past. The film is now due to premiere at the Bridge of Arts festival in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don this August.
