Description

Ukrainian director and writer Oleg Sentsov is from Crimea. When Russia annexed the peninsula, he was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in a gulag-style prison in Siberia on trumped-up charges and became the face of Ukrainian struggle against Russia. International filmmakers, human rights organisations and activists from across the world all fought for his release. On September 7 2019, he was set free as part of a prisoner exchange. He cannot return to Crimea, where his mother and two children lived until recently. In this exclusive UK event Oleg Sentsov will be in conversation with Natalia Kaliada & David Lan about life as a filmmaker, director and writer, and what he hopes the future holds.

This will be followed by the screening of the acclaimed documentary by Askold Kurov: The Trial: The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov. In his documentary, Kurov investigates the truth behind this political show-trial and documents the courageous way in which Sentsov defends himself, as well as his response to the verdict with an emphatic denial of the crimes and instead holds up a mirror to those holding him behind bars.

Natalia Kaliada is the co-founding Artistic Director of Belarus Free Theatre (BFT), an award-winning theatre-maker, writer and director. As an internationally renowned diplomat and human rights campaigner Natalia has pioneered a unique method of transversal lobbying and campaigning, uniting artistic, geopolitical, environmental and human rights concerns, to bring systematic change to different societies.

David Lan is a writer, producer and social anthropologist. He was writer in residence at the Royal Court 1995 to 1997 and artistic director of the Young Vic 2000 to 2018. He is currently Theatre Associate at BAM in New York. His memoir ‘As if by Chance: Journeys, Theatres, Lives’ will be published by Faber and Faber in early 2020.

PEN International is the world’s largest association of writers, championing the freedom to read, to write, to share literature, ideas and information without fear across the world, for close to one hundred years. Our campaigns, events, publications and programmes aim to connect writers and readers wherever they are in the world. PEN International’s and its Centres have been campaigning for Oleg Sentsov since his arrest.