Serebrennikov’s film about Limonov was included in the program at Cannes

A film directed by Kirill Serebrennikov about the writer and politician Eduard Limonov was included in the competition program of the Cannes Film Festival. Program published on the festival website. It follows from it that the film is included in the main program, which contains 19 films. They will compete for the main prize, the Palme d’Or.

The basis of the script for the film “Limonov. The Ballad” (previously it was reported that it would be called “Limonov. The Ballad of Eddie”) was Emmanuel Carrère’s novel “Limonov”, written during the writer’s lifetime.

The main role was played by British actor Ben Whishaw. The world premiere of the film will take place in Cannes.

In 2022, Serebrennikov’s film “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” was presented in the main program of the festival. The director, who had left Russia, then spoke at the Cannes festival condemning the invasion of Ukraine. Previously, the festival program included the film “Petrovs in the Flu.”

• Eduard Limonov is a Soviet and Russian prose writer, poet, publicist, and figure in the Moscow underground, who lived in exile in the USA and France in the 1970s and 1980s and subsequently returned to Russia. He became famous for his autobiographical novels. The founder of the National Bolshevik Party, recognized by the Russian authorities as extremist, spent several years in a Russian prison. Subsequently, he founded the “Other Russia” party, also unregistered by the Russian authorities, and participated in a number of opposition projects (“Marches of Dissent”, “Strategy 31”). He spoke from radical nationalist positions and supported pro-Russian separatists in Crimea and Donbass. Died in 2020.