‘Dau’ in Venice: a German wrapper, five jurisdictions, one circle of people

Khrzhanovsky cancelled his registration as a sole trader in Russia only in April 2026. He left the Cypriot entity he had founded together with the sanctioned Sergei Adoniev in April 2023 – fourteen months after the full-scale invasion began, and four years later than the date he has given for the break. And post-production on the earlier ‘Dau’ films was funded by a British trust whose main donor was an offshore company described in EU Court of Justice documents as the property of a Rostec partner.

‘Dau’ is a cycle of films based on the life of the Soviet physicist and Nobel laureate Lev Landau. Ilya Khrzhanovsky began the project in 2006; filming ran from 2008 to 2011 and took place mainly in Kharkiv, where a closed set was built for it. Landau was played by the conductor Teodor Currentzis.

Two films from the cycle were shown at the Berlinale in 2020. Venice screened a feature cut from footage of the same shoot.

Russia

Over the past two years Khrzhanovsky has consistently distanced himself from Russia in public. In 2024 he told Radio Svoboda that he had been living outside the country since 2006 and went there only rarely, and implied that he had not returned at all after 24 February 2022. The registers show something rather different.

Khrzhanovsky had been registered in Russia as a sole trader since at least 2008. In July 2025 an entry was added to the register recording that his details as a contributor had been submitted to Russia’s Social Fund – which suggests there was probably no intention at that point of winding the registration up. It was cancelled, on his own initiative, only in April 2026.

And on 31 August 2026 Slidstvo.Info published data from Russia’s Interior Ministry showing that the director’s Russian passport is valid – despite his statements that he is a citizen of Germany, the United Kingdom and Israel.

Owners and producers

The Venice film was produced by Phenomen Berlin Filmproduktions GmbH. The most recent publicly available information on its owners is the 2019 report of the British Phenomen Trust, which lists the company as belonging to Khrzhanovsky and Liubov Duiko.

Duiko is an indispensable link in the project. She is a senior partner at the St Petersburg law firm Vertikal, was a United Russia councillor for a municipal district from 2014 to 2019 (1, 2, 3), and founded the charity Alma Mater Foundation Worldwide. In May 2010 Khrzhanovsky transferred to her 66 per cent of the Russian company Phenomen Films LLC, which produced the ‘Dau’ films in Russia and held the rights to them; in 2023 she became its sole owner, and the following year the company was liquidated. According to Russia’s Federal Tax Service, in 2022 Phenomen Films paid $8.67 million (579.89 million roubles) in tax into the Russian budget (1, 2).

There is no direct evidence that the Venice film was funded from Russia, yet its 2026 producing team is made up of the same people who ran the project’s corporate structures in the 2010s.

The co-producer and representative of Phenomen Berlin appears in the credits and on the film’s page on the Biennale website as Svetlana Dragayeva. The same surname turns up in two registers in different spellings: in the German register, Phenomen Berlin’s director since its founding in 2011 is listed as Svitlana Drahaieva-Turovska; in the British one, the director of Phenomen Trust is a Polish citizen, Swietlana Dragajewa-Turowska.

Susanne Marian, co-writer and co-producer of the Venice film, took over Phenomen Berlin in 2017 and sat on the board of trustees of the same trust.

Money

The main backer of ‘Dau’ was Sergei Adoniev, who put at least $10 million into the shoot. In January 2023 the United States imposed sanctions on him and his sons: a State Department press release described him as a Russian businessman who acts as a financier for Vladimir Putin and for the head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov.

As far back as August 2018, RBC suggested that Duiko represented Adoniev’s interests in the project, citing the Cypriot company Iliontrap Investments Ltd in support. Duiko’s stake in Phenomen Films was pledged to that very company against loans made in 2012 and 2013; the same Iliontrap featured in an agreement on a joint project between Adoniev and the St Petersburg businessman Sergei Rukin, and Rukin confirmed to RBC that ‘Adoniev stands behind it’.

Iliontrap’s annual reports show that Phenomen Films LLC’s debt to it grew from $9.92 million at the end of 2014 to $16.15 million at the end of 2016, with the repayment deadlines pushed back each time. This is probably the Russian Phenomen Films: in the Phenomen Trust’s 2016 report, Phenomen Films LLC is mentioned as a related company controlled by Khrzhanovsky and Duiko.

Once filming was over, post-production on the ‘Dau’ films moved to London: from 2012 it was handled by the British company Phenomen Films UK, owned by the Phenomen Trust charity. The trust’s board of trustees included both of the film’s producers, Simon Shvarts – an American IT specialist of Russian origin with links to Adoniev’s companies – and the British lawyer Anthony Julius, whom, according to RBC, Adoniev hired to represent his interests in the United States.

The EU Court of Justice: who stands behind the main donor

According to the Phenomen Trust’s 2018 report, the trust’s main purpose at that point was post-production on the ‘Dau’ films, and its main donor was Imbell Global Ltd of the British Virgin Islands. Some of the money came from the Alma Mater Foundation Worldwide, founded by Duiko – but the report states that this was done on Imbell’s instructions.

In June 2026 the EU Court of Justice dismissed an appeal by Anastasia Ignatova, Sergei Chemezov’s stepdaughter, against the sanctions imposed on her. The court confirmed that the yacht Valerie had previously been used by Chemezov and members of his family. Ignatova maintained that she had sold her stake in the company through which she owned the yacht back in 2021; by her account the buyer was Imbell Global Limited, and the appeal names Albert Avdolyan as that company’s ultimate owner.

Avdolyan was a co-owner of Scartel together with Adoniev. Forbes describes him as a Rostec partner and a long-standing acquaintance of Chemezov. As of August 2026 he is subject to EU, Canadian, Swiss and Ukrainian sanctions.

Cyprus: a break declared to have come in 2019

In January 2017 Adoniev, Duiko, Khrzhanovsky and four other people became co-founders of the Cypriot company Deepforest Limited – a non-profit company with no share capital, which therefore has no shareholders. All seven joined the board of directors and, according to the annual report, were still on it as of September 2018.

Khrzhanovsky left the post in April 2023. In June 2024 the company was wound up; Adoniev and Duiko were its directors to the end.

We found no sign that Deepforest funded ‘Dau’: it is probably the legal vehicle of The Deep Forest Foundation, set up in 2017 to help indigenous peoples. But the circle of people is the same. Among its co-founders are the documentary maker Mark Andrew Franchetti, on whose film the Phenomen Trust spent part of its money, and the photographer Yuri Kozyrev, while those taking part in the foundation’s projects included the ‘Dau’ screenwriter Ilya Permyakov and Vangelino Currentzis – the younger brother of Teodor Currentzis, who played Lev Landau in ‘Dau’, has held Russian citizenship since 2014 and whose projects have been funded by companies belonging to sanctioned Russian businessmen.

The reaction in Ukraine

On 17 August 2026 Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture called on the festival to check the origin of the funding and the connections of those involved. The Biennale’s management replied that the film was a German production and that the director did not hold Russian citizenship. Khrzhanovsky said the accusations were built on false associations and a distorted chronology. Four weeks later the festival gave Khrzhanovsky the Silver Lion for Best Director.

As we have seen from the data, the producer’s German registration is lawful, the sanctions do not extend to the film, and there is no direct sign of Russian money funding this particular film.

But everything that can be checked points in one direction. The sole trader’s registration in Russia remained valid until April 2026. Khrzhanovsky left the Cypriot entity he had founded together with the sanctioned Adoniev fourteen months after the invasion began. The credits of the Venice film carry the same producers who ran the project’s companies in the 2010s. And the editing of the earlier films was paid for by a trust whose main donor was an offshore company described in EU Court of Justice documents as the property of a Rostec partner.

What has changed is the jurisdiction under which ‘Dau’ goes out into the world. The circle of people who own it, on the available data, has not.