Following weeks of criticism from activists and Ukrainian officials, Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera defended his selection of Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s feature DAU in a lengthy Instagram message posted on Wednesday. 

Beginning by describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “bloody and cruel”, Barbera said that critics of Venice and its inclusion of DAU had tried to “build a castle of accusations based on lying premises and manipulation of reality to attack the Biennale and a film invited to contest”. He described the criticism as “petty and unacceptable.” 

“DAU is not a Russian film; it is not pro-Putin propaganda; it is a film of denunciation of totalitarian regimes and their intrusion into the lives of citizens to limit their freedom,” Barbera wrote. 

“It is the work of a Russian dissident who ended up in the prohibition lists of the regime as a terrorist and enemy of the State, a filmmaker who has taken a stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the very beginning.” 

Barbera continued to question his critics: “Why then this inexplicable short circuit to the damage of a film that the prosecutors have obviously not yet seen? Why make the Biennale yet another target of a free and unjustified attack?” 

The longtime Venice chief suggested that what he described as attacks on the film Biennale were due to the fact that the event has remained “one of the few wanderers in the world defending freedom of expression, regardless of geographical origin and nationality.”

“Let’s defend autonomy and freedom,” he concluded the post. 

After the Venice lineup announcement earlier this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Italy, issued a joint statement stating their deep concern over the inclusion of Khrzhanovsky’s DAU in the festival’s main competition.  

Part of the statement read: “At the time when Russia is continuing its war of aggression against Ukraine, systematically destroying cities, cultural heritage and national identity, offering one of the world’s most prestigious cultural platforms to a project linked to the Russian state and its networks of influence sends a deeply worrying signal.”

DAU is said to follow a Greek-born physicist living in the USSR from 1928 to 1968. The official synopsis reads: Driven by a desire to understand the laws of the universe, Dau is gradually compelled to place his scientific genius in the service of the Soviet state, helping to create the deadliest weapon in history.

DAU debuts on September 9 in Venice.