Controversial Russian-Ukrainian art project DAU debuts at Venice amid political protest
The 165-minute film DAU, the long-awaited “mother film” of a two-decade Soviet-era art experiment, will compete at the Venice Film Festival, prompting a formal complaint from Ukraine over its Russian ties.
After twenty years of storage and editing, Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s flagship film DAU, assembled from 700 hours of 35mm footage shot in a recreated Soviet institute near Kharkiv, will premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The project, funded initially by Eurimages and later by Russian oligarch Sergei Adoniev, turned a film set into a self-contained micro-society where participants lived, worked and were interrogated in period costume.
Earlier offshoots such as DAU. Natasha and DAU. Degeneratsiya sparked controversy over alleged on-set sexual violence and were banned in Russia as “pornographic propaganda.”
Ahead of Venice, Ukraine’s ministries and its embassy in Italy filed a joint protest, arguing the film’s ties to Russian state networks and to Currentzis, a Russian citizen who has not condemned the war. Khrzhanovsky responded on social media, insisting the film critiques totalitarian evil and is not a propaganda instrument, while acknowledging Ukraine’s right to protest. The dispute highlights how an avant-garde art experiment has become entangled in current geopolitical tensions.
Why it matters
The film’s Venice screening revives a controversial art project and raises questions about cultural collaboration amid the Russia-Ukraine war.
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