Two pro-Russian events scheduled in Italy at the end of January (in Lucca and Modena) and which created discontent among both the center-right and center-left were not enough. Bologna now joins the list with the screening of a film against Ukraine. This is the film “Il Testimone”, in English “The Witness”, scheduled in the next few days at the Villa Paradiso neighborhood house in the Emilian capital. The film is the first Russian feature film on the invasion of Ukraine, directly financed by the Moscow Ministry of Culture, released in August 2023 and which was a real box office flop at home.
“We will immediately summon the manager of the space under the agreement, it is unacceptable to use an institutional venue for propaganda activities, we are against this initiative and will ask the organizers to withdraw it” the Municipality of Bologna said in a note. The film tells the story of a Belgian violinist, Daniel Cohen, who arrives in Kiev for a concert shortly before the Russian invasion of February 2022. Cohen accidentally finds himself involved in the fighting, thus becoming a direct witness to a series of “inhuman acts and provocations bloody attacks attributed to Ukrainian nationalists”, as reported in the film’s poster.
«We are seeing that Italy, unfortunately, is becoming a victim of the Kremlin’s manipulations, since the amount of events planned for the near future is impressive: Modena, Lucca, Bologna and others» denounces the Ukrainian ambassador to Rome, Yaroslav Melnyk , in reference to this series of appointments.