Hype

Posts Tagged ‘Berlinale’

Khodorkovsky Film Storms Berlinale

Berlin, Feb 24

It took a film about a jailed Russian dissident tycoon to shake up this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. In true B EAST style, the documentary Khodorkovsky provided a mix of criminal espionage, political intrigue and controversy.
Khodorkovsky is the story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian billionaire oil tycoon who found himself on the wrong side of the Kremlin.

A former communist party member, Khodorkovsky rose from lowly beginnings to become the owner of one of the privatized oil companies after the fall of the U.S.S.R. Once one of Russia’s richest men, he turned against Putin by funding opposition parties. Shortly after he was arrested on charges of fraud, and remains imprisoned in the justice system.
“There is no juridicial (sic) structure in Russia right now,” the film’s director Cyril Tuschi told a Berlinale press conference. “Every child who was in this court saw that the whole thing was a theatre.”
Tuschi – who looks a little like Quentin Tarantino with a Bolshevik beard – provided a bit of theatre himself when he announced that a burglary had taken place in his studio. On Feb 7, just days before the film was to premiere at Berlinale, Tuschi claimed that his office had been broken into, and a laptop containing the final edit of the film stolen.
Were Russian agents behind the break? Or was it a story concocted to generate publicity?
A police spokesman confirmed to B EAST that they had received a complaint about a burglary and are investigating, but could provide no details of the alleged break-in. Tuschi himself said that the burglary was good for the film’s promotion. The wheels of the German justice system turn slowly – though not as slow as in Russia – so it may take a few months to see what the police found, if anything.
Tuschi said there were many people who had a lot to lose from Khodorkovsky’s story being told.
“The rich people have fear that they lose their money, the power have fear that they lose the power,” he said.
The “money shot” of the film is the director’s short interview with Khodorkovsky himself, shot through the bars of a courtroom prison. Though it was the hardest piece of footage for the director to capture, it turns out to be the least illuminating part of the film. The preceding story of the Russian’s rise and fall, and the question of why he allowed himself to be arrested, are the driving elements of this impressive documentary.
The film proved so popular that extra screenings had to be organized. It will be released soon in cinemas and on DVD.