Petrov's Flu

Kirill Serebrennikov, the director of Petrov’s Flu (Petrov v grippe), wasn’t at Cannes in 2021 to see his film screened, as he hadn’t been at Cannes to see his previous film, LETO, screened in 2018. He was under house arrest back home in Russia, having been accused of embezzling funds from the Seventh Studio, one of several cultural institutions he was connected to. The charges were widely seen as trumped up, part of Vladimir Putin’s ongoing fight against liberal elements in Russia – Serebrennikov is a vocal supporter of LGBT causes. Given all that background, you might expect Petrov’s Flu, a fictional work but one set in the post-Soviet era, when society had … Read more