Ukrainian writer-director Oleg Sentsov, released in September from a Russian prison after five years in captivity, is to resume his filmmaking career.
Speaking at the Frontline Club in Paddington, London, on Friday evening at an event organised by PEN International, Sentsov revealed that he is resuming work on Rhino, the feature film he was working on at the time of his arrest in 2015 on trumped up charges. The Ukrainian filmmaker said he had five film projects in preparation – with Rhino the first in the queue.
“For me, filmmaking is the key thing in my creative plans. I’ve got five screenplays that I want to put into films in the next five years. Two of them were written before I was put into prison and three were written in prison. Also, I’ve written two books of short stories, two novels and the diary of my (145 day) hunger strike when I was in prison,” the prolific author, filmmaker and activist explained.
“Basically, it doesn’t matter to me whether I was in prison or was writing outside of prison. I am quite an introverted person. Whatever happens inside me is very important. What happens outside is less important.”
Speaking during a Q&A with Natalia Koliada, co-founding Artistic Director of Belarus Free Theatre (BFT), Sentsov was withering in his assessment of Russian President Putin. He had grim stories about protesters given three year prison sentences by the Russian government “in the Siberian colonies” simply because they were carrying posters with anti-Putin slogans. “And I know somebody who was sentenced for four years for four lines in a Facebook comment.”
However, the Ukrainian refused to comment on allegations of Russian interference in the British Brexit referendum or to say how the British government should respond. “I am not in advice-giving mode. I don’t give advice,” Sentsov declared. “And I don’t think I should give advice to the British citizens. I think they should find their own way and understand what they have to do. I think if we all live our own lives and don’t meddle in the affairs of other people, we will live a very honest life. If Putin would have dealt with his own life and his own things, we wouldn’t have been sitting here now.”
At the event, Sentsov was signing copies of his latest book, a collection of autobiographical short stories called Life Went On Anyway. He expressed his gratitude to the campaigners worldwide who pressed Putin to release him and who wrote to him. “Those postcards meant a lot to me,” he commented, adding however that many of these postcards were taken away from him. “There are some bad people working in Russian prisons. (But) they couldn’t take everything away from me. When I came home, I had a whole bag with a weight of 22 kilos. It was full of cards, notes, paper.”
Sentsov said that whatever prison he was sent to, he never threw away the letters of support he received. “I am pleading to you, please write letters to those who are political prisoners now. It means a lot and it is a massive support,” he said.
