EFA initiates letter for immediate release of Oleg Sentsov.
Krakow Film Foundation, the oragnizer of Krakow Film Festival, supports the initiative of European Film Academy to free Oleg Sentsov, an Ukrainian Filmmaker facing up to 20 years in jail. If you would like to help, you can send letter to Russian officials. The more letters, the better.
The full text of the letter is:
To
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin – President of Russia
Sergey Evgenyevich Naryshkin – Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation
Alexander Wassiljewitsch Bortnikow – Director of the FSB
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kolokoltsev – Russian Minister of Internal Affairs
Yuriy Yakovlevich Chaika – Prosecutor General
From the moment when we learned that the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was arrested by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) in his house in Simferopol on 11 May 2014, we have been deeply worried. We have followed the proceedings from a trial repeatedly being postponed until over one year later when it finally opened in Rostov-on-Don. Having observed the trial and especially the fact that the key witness for the prosecution has retracted his testimony as “given under pressure and duress”, we are shocked that the accusation of Oleg Sentsov having committed “crimes of a terrorist nature” is still being upheld.
In the light of these circumstances, we respectfully call upon you
• to ensure the safety of Oleg Sentsov;
• to have the charges dropped due to insufficient evidence;
• to have the detained released immediately and unconditionally;
• to ensure complete rehabilitation of the detained;
• to instigate a full, prompt and impartial investigation into the apparently arbitrary detention by the FSB and Oleg Sentsov’s statements about torture in order to bring all those responsible to justice.
Yours faithfully,
Stephen Daldry, director, UK
Mike Downey, producer, UK
Agnieszka Holland, director, Poland
Dariusz Jablonski, producer, Poland
Aki Kaurismäki, director, Finland
Mike Leigh, director, UK
Ken Loach, director, UK
Wojciech Marczewski, director, Poland
Daniel Olbrychski, actor, Poland
Volker Schlöndorff, director, Germany
Béla Tarr, director, Hungary
Bertrand Tavernier, director, France
Andrzej Wajda, director, Poland
Wim Wenders, director, Germany
Krzysztof Zanussi, director, Poland
Read more: www.europeanfilmacademy.org