Andrei Zvyagintsev, the director of the Oscar-nominated Leviathan, has encouraged Russians to watch the film illegally via a pirated download.

The film has been subject to cuts, thanks to a ban on profanity in Russian films, and Zvyagintsev wants Russians to be able to see it as he intended. And as it is only opening on 650 screens across the whole country, he wants everyone to have the opportunity. “I would suggest that viewers who have no opportunity to see the film on the big screen as it may not make it to a small town or village, just download the picture and watch it,” he told Gazeta.ru.

The film was leaked online in January, and the Hollywood Reporter claims that four million people have downloaded it so far. The film is perhaps the favourite to pick up the best foreign film Oscar, following its success in the same category at the Golden Globes.

It has struck a sour note with Russia’s culture ministry however, with its leader Vladimir Medinksy saying the film characters “are not Russians”, and that films like it, “filled with a sense of despair and hopelessness over our existence, should not be financed with taxpayers’ money”.

Leviathan is a bleak retelling of the Job story from the Bible, but with a man in northern Russia battling against a local bureaucrat over a patch of land. Zvyagintsev previously told the Guardian: “It’s a very Russian film … We live in a feudal system when everything is in the hands of one person, and everyone else is in a vertical of subordination.”

He has addressed the polarising effect the film has had in another new interview. “The audience, the country was split over it,” he told a news conference in Russia. “It should have been understood that the public would be polarised, but the extreme points of view over the film show it was a success. It touched something very important.”

Russian film-makers are currently lobbying the government to have the ban on profanity overturned or revised.