The Dmitriev Affair, a new feature-length documentary by Dutch director Jessica Gorter, will be screened in New York. Its North American premiere will take place on November 12 at the DOC NYC Documentary Film Festival, where the film is in international competition.
Filmed in Russian with English subtitles, The Dmitriev Affair had its world premiere last June at the Krakow International Film Festival.
This is the story of Yuri Dmitriev, a tireless and fearless truth-seeker from Karelia, who, together with like-minded people from the Memorial organization, did tremendous work to restore the names of several tens of thousands of victims of repressions of Stalin. . When the authorities, dissatisfied with Dmitriev’s activity (he headed the Karelian section of the Memorial), became convinced that they could not force him to stop, they invented a false court case of pedophilia against him. And he is now serving a sentence of several years in prison.
“The case of Dmitriev.” movie frame
The world calls him the “archaeologist of terror.” The mass graves he found in Karelia became over time a place of memory and mourning for the innocent victims, attended by relatives of the victims and human rights activists. The Kremlin, which during the years of Putin’s regime chose a course to justify Stalin’s terror, seeks to discredit Dmitriev and his colleagues as “agents of the West.” Despite protests in Russia and around the world, the Memorial was closed and its activities suspended. In 2022, the Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Alexander Cherkasov: “Dmitriev violated the unspoken restrictions of power”
His colleague, the former chairman of the board of directors of the Memorial Center for Human Rights, Alexander Cherkasov, speaks about Yuri Dmitriev in an interview with the Russian Voice of America service:
“Yuri Dmitriev is a man who for many years has been restoring the memory of the people shot in the Sandarmokh area of Karelia. Many thousands died there, more than 7 thousand people. Search engines do this kind of work everywhere in Russia, because they were filmed everywhere. But Sandarmokh, from a local place of memory, has become an international center of memory, because there are monuments to executed Ukrainians, executed Poles and executed Lithuanians. And the Ukrainian delegations, for example, came there every year.”
According to Alexander Cherkasov, Sandarmokh’s importance increased with the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2014:
“The case of Dmitriev.” movie frame
“Yuri Dmitriev always emphasized the importance not of past events, but of modern ones. In 2015, at the usual memorial days in Sandarmokh, he spoke about the Russian war in Ukraine. After this, the local authorities refused to cooperate with him and the fabrication of a criminal case against him began. Because memory is allowed, but as something separate, private, not as state terrorism, and it is allowed as something separate from today’s events.
Dmitriev, according to the former director of the Memorial, violated both restrictions in the eyes of the Russian authorities: “He restored the memory of terror in the USSR as a general policy of Soviet power and the basis on which the Soviet Union was based. and connected Soviet terrorism and Putin’s war. That is why he became the object of severe persecution and attempts to discredit his cause and his ideas.”
Alexander Cherkasov believes that any attempt to tell the world about the “Dmitriev case” is very important, because the global scale of protests for his release may even influence the Kremlin:
“They say that in Russia there is no way to successfully fight for the freedom of political prisoners, there is no way to force the authorities to change their minds and not keep their opponent in prison. But in Memorial we have examples of the opposite: the cases of Oyub Titiev and Oleg Orlov. When it is more expensive for the authorities to keep a person behind bars than to release him, and when a public campaign, a global wave of support – even in conditions of war and the Kremlin’s opposition to the entire world – prove to be an additional burden, “The last straw breaks the camel’s back, then the authorities can withdraw.”
“It is very difficult to achieve the release of a person who has already been put behind bars. But any speech in support of Yuri Dmitriev, any action of solidarity is important. We do not know which grain of sand that falls on the scale can make it turn in the opposite direction,” says the Russian human rights activist.
Jessica Gorter: “Russia has never healed the trauma of Stalinism”
The company that released The Dmitriev Affair, Zeppers Film, is an independent film company in Amsterdam that has produced over a hundred films, mostly documentaries, over the past 20 years. The film’s director, Jessica Gorter, studied direction and editing at the Amsterdam Film Academy. When she was a teenager, she lived in the United States for several years. As a director, she is interested in Russia, a country she has visited many times.
His films, which have won numerous festival awards, address various aspects of Russian national identity and dramatic pages of the country’s history.
The world premiere of his previous film “Red Soul” took place in 2017 at the Amsterdam Film Festival (IDFA). In it, she decided to understand how different generations of Russians today perceive the personality and legacy of Joseph Stalin. Red Soul was screened at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, as part of Putin’s Russia, a broad overview of contemporary Russian cinema. His two previous films, “Peter” (2004) and “900 Days” (2011), are also dedicated to the recent history of Russia and its refraction in the mass consciousness. Jessica Gorter teaches film art and leads master classes at film schools. Since 2019 she teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Jessica Gorter responded to questions from a VOA Russian service correspondent via Zoom.
Oleg Sulkin: Jessica, we have known each other for a long time, since the premiere of the movie “Peter” in Rotterdam. I can’t help but ask you: how did you perceive the beginning of Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine?
Jessica Gorter: It was definitely a shock. And at the same time, since I have been following what is happening in Russia for many years, it has not completely surprised me. Somewhat naively I told myself: this can’t be. But everything was going in that direction. And Yuri (Dmitriev) warned him more than once. He saw where everything was going. But I considered him too pessimistic and told him that this prediction smacked of paranoia. But alas, in the end it turned out that he was right.
SW: His previous film, “Red Soul,” showed how strong Stalinist feelings are in Russian society. His new film, “The Dmitriev Affair,” indicates that the return to repression has already occurred. Did you have to change anything in your plan?
“The case of Dmitriev.” movie frame
DG: We follow the events as they happened. I am neither a historian nor a politician, but a filmmaker. I can only tell you what I saw with my own eyes, what I experienced myself. The main conclusion I drew after filming “Red Soul” was that Stalin is not a thing of the past. I believe that our collective past, rife with violence and pain, has caused deep trauma. Along with fear, this unhealed trauma is passed on to new generations. I think that’s why so many Russians are passive and even apathetic. I’m not trying to justify anyone, I just want to understand how Russia got to its current state. The fact that the authorities did not even attempt to heal the trauma of Stalinism makes it easier today to return to the narratives of the past, not only of the Stalin era, but also to much earlier periods of Russian history.
SW: How did you meet Dmitriev? What was your first impression?
DG: When I was working on “Red Soul”, my Russian colleagues told me about it more than once. There is such an amazing person in Karelia, Dmitriev, who, together with Memorial, found a large mass grave of victims of political repression, and you should definitely meet him. I met him in May 2016. I arrived in Petrozavodsk with my film crew. For “Red Soul” I had to film very little, because in addition to Dmitriev, six more protagonists should be featured in that film. But upon meeting him, I immediately felt the scale and charm of his personality. Dmitriev did the most important job: returning to people the memory of the past, the memory of his relatives killed during the Stalin era. He did it despite many obstacles, despite intense pressure. And then we filmed many more episodes with Dmitriev than were necessary for “Red Soul.” I told him our plans and our desire to meet with him and talk in more detail about the new film. He agreed, but noted that he might not be available to communicate and explained that clouds were falling on him and a lawsuit was being prepared against him. Six months later they called me: “Dmitriev has been arrested.” After a while, he was temporarily released. I went to Petrozavodsk, alone, without a group, and realized that this could be my last meeting with him. And so it happened. Covid started and I couldn’t come to Russia anymore. This was my last trip. I agreed with Russian cameraman Sergei Markelov to film Yuri’s family, including his daughter Katya, while he was in prison. (Sergei now lives in New York). The court first dismissed the charges against Dmitriev, which was considered a miracle, and then sentenced him again to an even harsher prison term.
SW: Many observers consider the accusations against Dmitriev to be implausible and ridiculous. How do you evaluate his legal epic?
DG: A few weeks after his arrest, official Russian television announced that Memorial activist Yuri Dmitriev was accused of taking pornographic photographs of his adopted daughter. He was declared a pedophile and, although the trial had not yet begun, he was presented as guilty beforehand. The charges were filed anonymously and the photographs were leaked to the press. Not even Dmitriev’s lawyer had access to them then. State television channels claimed that the activities of Dmitriev and his colleagues at the Memorial were aimed at “denigrating Russia’s past.” This was the beginning, and false trials followed. In December 2021, Dmitriev was sentenced to 15 years in a strict regime correctional labor colony. A day later, Memorial was liquidated. Therefore, the message from the authorities is absolutely clear.
“The case of Dmitriev.” movie frame
SW: How important is the script to you?
DG: Intuition is perhaps more important. My 25 years of experience working on Russian-themed films helped me. And when Dmitriev was arrested for the first time, I realized that I had to make this film, that this was my mission.
SW: At the end of the film, a line appears on the screen saying that in March 2022 Dmitriev was transferred to a colony in Mordovia. This camp was part of the Gulag during the Stalin era. If this isn’t sophisticated harassment, what is it?
DG: Yes, this is true, and Yuri himself understands it better than anyone.
SW: And at the same time maintain fighting spirit?
DG: It seems that way. I have no direct contact with him now. I am in contact with his eldest daughter Katya. He is optimistic in the sense that he does not admit defeat. He fulfills his mission, his purpose. He believes in God and destiny. Yuri’s story is very important today. This is not just an example of a lone person fighting the system, he is an example of how the mechanism of repression of protests and dissent works and how the current regime seeks to rewrite history. The Dmitriev case concerns Russia, it concerns the United States, it concerns us all.
