It is a barometer of the state of Russia. An insatiable jack-of-all-trades, director of the Gogol Center, which he made into a space for multidisciplinary creation and a cultural hotspot in Moscow, Kirill Serebrennikov was one of the emblematic figures of the Russian artistic scene before his shows and engagements progressives – and, no doubt, his homosexuality – swear too much with Putin’s ultra-conservatism and the idea he has of national art. Accused in 2017 of embezzlement of public funds, house arrest, deprived of his freedom of speech and movement, Serebrennikov received in June 2020, after a Kafkaesque trial, a three-year suspended prison sentence and a disqualification from directing a public institution.
Despite the oppression, he never stopped creating, his productions being staged all over the world and his films all competing at the Cannes Film Festival. But he had to wait until 2022, the year of his exile in Berlin, to regain his autonomy and be able to accompany his new feature film on the Croisette. This one, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife”, draws the portrait as a martyr of Antonina Miliukova, the neglected wife of the composer of “The Nutcracker”, victim of the shameful homosexuality of her husband and of the disregard that the Russian society made women. The film, in theaters on February 15, seems a long way off for Serebrennikov, who has since opened the Avignon Festival with Chekhov’s “The Black Monk” (resumed next March at the Théâ
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