By: Daniel McElroy
The Voice Project’s campaign to free Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov ended Saturday with his release from a Russian prison after more than five years behind bars. Sentsov returned to Kiev amidst relief and excitement from family, friends, and fellow filmmakers worldwide.
Most famous in Ukraine for his 2012 film Gámer, Sentsov was arrested in 2014 by Russian forces in Ukraine following his support of the Euromaidan protests. He was deported to Russia and spent a year in detention awaiting trial, before being charged with planning terrorist attacks and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The case is widely known to have been fabricated by prosecutors who tortured the defendants, created a fake “terrorist organization,” and extracted a testimony “given under pressure and duress” from their key witness.
In 2018, almost four years to the day after his initial arrest, Sentsov started a 145-day hunger strike, demanding the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia, except his own. The strike garnered international attention that galvanized German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and members of the U.S. Congress to call on Russia for his release. He has spent the past five years being transferred regularly among different hard labor camps and detention facilities throughout Siberia.
Sentsov’s release was part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine that saw 70 prisoners—35 from each side—to be released simultaneously.
The Voice Project launched a campaign to call for Sentsov’s release shortly following his arrest in 2014, in which Johnny Depp “stood in” for Oleg in a mugshot photo with the Ukraininan’s filmmakers arrest and sentencing information. This action, part of The Voice Project’s wider “Imprisoned for Art” campaign, helped to raise the level of international awareness on the case as t-shirts with the Depp image made rounds on social media, and we have been adamantly maintaining our support and closely monitoring updates to the case since then.
Numerous human rights organisations subsequently took up Sentsov’s case and International film festivals also joined in demanding Sentsov’s freedom, with organizers of festivals in Warsaw, San Sebastian, and Venice honorarily naming him to their judging panels and symbolically leaving an “empty chair” in protest of his continued detention.
We thank all those who participated in the campaign and raised their voices so Sentsov could be free again to continue his filmmaking and activism in support of free expression.
