Moscow, October 17, 2017

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has for the first time addressed the scandal-ridden film Mathilde, calling on people to avoid introducing “speculations, which can hurt a great many people” into works dealing with historical facts, reports patriarchia.ru.

Pat. Kirill offered his remarks, without explicitly mentioning the name of the film, at a meeting of the Supreme Church Council of the Russian Orthodox Church at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral on Thursday.

For his part, Mathilde director Alexei Uchitel has expressed his disappointment at the patriarch’s words, calling them “unexpected.”

“Can there be an objective assessment of history?” the primate asked. “It’s a controversial question and the subject of battles. History is a very convenient soil for ideological speculations, and the creation of advantageous myths—both nationalistic and anti-nationalistic. When you’re working with history, it’s very easy to go into a deceitful interpretation, even in the small things. But for an honest person, lies and deceit are unthinkable,” His Holiness asserted.

Explaining how to properly handle history, the patriarch continued, “Strive to be conscientiousness when dealing with facts. Avoid fabrications, and especially fabrications which are not just false, but are also able to hurt a great many people, as has occurred with a not-yet-released but already infamous film.”

Responding to the patriarch’s “unexpected” evaluation, director Uchitel suggested that the patriarch should watch the film, as he has with all of his critics who have taken offense at the film’s deceitful depiction of the Royal Martyr Tsar Nicholas II, RIA-Novosti reports.

“The patriarch has come out with a statement that was personally unexpected for me. It was especially unpleasant,” Uchitel stated in a recent interview, “when a person of such a rank, whom I greatly respect, not having seen the film makes some claims about its historical inaccuracies… I still invite the patriarch to watch our film and find out for himself what it shows.”

Uchitel's reported surprise comes a few days after he admitted that the film contains historical inaccuracies and artistic fabrications.

As the patriarch further explained in his address, for many people, the events of the 20th century are “still a bleeding wound,” but still “the bitter pages of our past often become today a subject of speculation, including on the artistic level.” He noted that artists have the right to artistic creativity, but “artistic creativity and lying are different things.”

“Artistic creativity is a dramatic technique, and as such enhances the interest of the audience in the historical facts. Lying is not a dramatic technique. Lying grossly distorts the historical reality and deliberately leads people astray. It is precisely lies that sits at the base of propaganda, which plunged our people into revolutionary chaos, and then into the abyss of suffering,” His Holiness emphasized.

This is not the first time that Uchitel has been taken by surprise by a bishop’s negative evaluation of his film. Having watched the film at the director’s request, His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk told him, “There is nothing good I can say about your film,” adding that, “He was upset, perhaps even offended.”

His Grace Bp. Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Egorievsk has also stated that he turned down Uchitel’s request for him to be a consultant on the film, given that the script had already been completed. Bp. Tikhon relates: “The director Uchitel said, ‘The script is already ready.’ I said, ‘The script?... First you make a request to consultants, and then you develop the script.’ He said, ‘The film is already almost ready.’ I said, ‘That’s great! You want a consultant on a film that’s nearly ready. Why?’”

Bp. Tikhon has also called the film a “vulgar fraud” and a “slander.