BERLIN – For the last six years, for Europe’s movie community at least, the most famous political prisoner in the world was the Ukraine’s Oleg Sentsov. Arrested on trumped-up charges of terrorism in 2014 – Amnesty International compared his court case to the show trials of Stalin – Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment as a pawn in a larger game of realpolitik via which Vladimir Putin attempted to dissuade Crimea’s Ukrainians from dissidence.
Variety: Sentsov on his film, directed from a gulag
Oleg Sentsov speaks onstage during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival The Feeling Of Exile Panel at Filmmaker Lodge on Feb. 1, 2020 in Park City, Utah.
