Andrei Zvyagintsev’s film has been subject to fierce official criticism for its portrayal of modern Russia and cold-shouldered by state TV – but the controversy has stoked local interest

Even as Russia’s Academy-award nominee Leviathan was winning prizes at half a dozen illustrious film festivals and garnering glowing reviews at arthouse cinemas in New York and London, doubts remained as to whether it would even be shown in its home country. Besides a week-long showing in one St Petersburg theatre in September to meet Oscar entry requirements, the film’s release date was postponed, as officials criticised its grim take on modern Russia and many called for it to be banned.

That’s about to change on 5 February, when director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s dark morality tale will begin showing on at least 638 screens around the country, producer Alexander Rodnyansky has told the Guardian in an interview. He said the film has online piracy to thank for that: where state television has mostly ignored the many accolades Leviathan has won, including a Golden Globe for best foreign-language film, an estimated 1.5 million Russians have taken interest and downloaded the film illegally.

In confirmation of the old adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, the heated debate over the film has made it into a “major public event” and won the movie more than double the 300 screens its producers thought they could get, Rodnyansky said.

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“The unexpected thing, which we never experienced before, is that a few million people have watched it online, [now that] it’s been pirated,” he said. “A lot of cinemas and theatrical chains approached us because of all the controversy around the movie.”

But although Leviathan has overcome the criticism at home to be shown in local cinemas, Rodnyansky, who is arguably Russia’s best-known film producer, said the movie will likely be a rare bright spot in a film industry that prefers patriotic pap to hard truths. Nine out of 10 movies made in Russia receive government financing, and as a result, big Russian blockbusters in recent years have tended to focus on heroic narratives, like the top-grossing second world war flick Stalingrad.

“I think we’re getting into challenging times,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to finance Leviathan sort of movies through the state. They believe they should only finance important films, patriotic ones, although our movie is done by a director who loves Russia … It won’t make it easier for people in Russia to get state financing.”

According to the producer, Leviathan has exposed deep divisions in society, with many people interpreting it as an “offence against Russia”. After Moscow annexed Crimea last year and backed a separatist uprising against the new pro-western government in Kiev, cold war-style rhetoric has been on the rise. One pro-Kremlin pundit even accused the film-makers of acting on western orders to make an “anti-Putin” manifesto.

“In a country where there are so many people who believe Russia is in conflict with the world, you don’t get a chance to explain that you make a movie to make domestic audiences laugh and cry,” Rodyansky said. “Zvyagintsev has made a very universal story, but it’s also a contemporary story from Russia.”

In the film, the all-powerful mayor of a town in northern Russia – who has a portrait of Vladimir Putin above his desk – goes far beyond the letter of the law in his quest to appropriate the seaside home of a local car mechanic. Besides the backstabbing and intrigue, most of the characters are constantly swearing and swilling vodka, the town is decrepit, and the legal system is a sham.

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In response to this depiction, the head of Teriberka, the town in the Murmansk region where Leviathan was filmed, accused it of showing a “dirty, unwashed Russia” and said it had received such acclaim in the west because it was “anti-Russian”. In response, Rodyansky worked with the independent television channel Dozhd to set up a screening in Teriberka last weekend, after which the town head admitted most residents had enjoyed the movie.

But the most controversial portrayal in Leviathan is that of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has enjoyed a privileged role in public affairs during Putin’s tenure: the archbishop who advises the mayor is merely an appendage of the state, preaching humility and obedience while himself enjoying a grossly extravagant lifestyle. Several Orthodox groups have called for the picture to be banned, and a group of politicians and public figures asked the culture ministry to take measures against the actor who played the archbishop.

But Rodyansky argued Leviathan is not anti-church but rather is about the “alliance between power and the church”. The movie recently even received the blessing of the Murmansk bishop, who called it “honest”.

Oddly enough, Leviathan received 37 million rubles of its 240 million ruble (£2.3m) budget from the government, despite the critical depiction of the state. Rodyansky said the project had managed to win funding through a new public pitching process the culture ministry was introducing in 2012 in an attempt “to be open, or at least pretend to be open”.

A recent initiative to expand the committee that chooses Russia’s Academy award nominee also benefitted Leviathan: Rodyansky said he personally made sure that all the committee members watched the film, with the result that it won more votes than the wedding comedy backed by celebrated director Nikita Mikhalkov, who heads the Russian Cinematographers’ Union and is an outspoken Putin supporter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Guardian film team review Leviathan.

But Leviathan’s against-all-odds success bucks an overall trend toward tighter constraints on film-making in Russia. Even though Zvyagintsev argued that the swearing in the film is essential to its realist depiction of life, a scrubbed version will be shown in Russia due to a July law that bans offensive language in artistic productions. And the culture ministry announced this month that it would adopt new regulations to deny distribution licenses to films that “defile” national culture or “threaten national unity”.

Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, who once said about film funding that “all flowers should grow but we will only water the ones we like”, accused Leviathan of representing Russians negatively and suggested Zvyagintsev made it out of his love for “fame, red carpets and statuettes”.

Rodyansky called suggestions that the movie was aiming only for foreign accolades “bullshit” and said that many of Russia’s greatest writers were criticised in similar language to that of the charges levelled against Leviathan.

“Gogol was criticised for Dead Souls having no positive characters. But when they asked him about this, Gogol answered that the only positive character in his book is laughter,” Rodyansky said, arguing that Leviathan provokes similar emotions. “The director’s passion is to make the country better by telling the truth.”