The Moscow City Court upheld the decision to arrest director Yevgenia Berkovich, rejecting the appeal.
During the court session, Berkovich said that the conditions in the women's isolation ward, where she has been staying for 25 days, are difficult: it is cold, there is a basement, there are cockroaches. She also said that she was worried about her children (Berkovich is a foster mother for two girls whom she took from an orphanage, she talked about this in more detail, for example, in an interview with Ekaterina Gordeeva) and for a 90-year-old grandmother:
“I can’t eat properly and I can’t sleep, I was separated from the children, they need me. I cannot explain to the children why I am in the isolation ward, why they keep me here. Psychologists worked with them for four years. Restored after experienced in the orphanage! I can’t see them, I can’t hug them, they didn’t let me talk to them on the phone, they didn’t give me a single call. It can end very hard for my children, it can end in death, God forbid, they have experienced so much in the orphanage. I could not hug my 90-year-old grandmother and congratulate her on Victory Day, because on May 9 I was in jail. I am sitting here without committing any crime.”
Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk have been under arrest since May 5. They are involved in the case of "justifying terrorism", initiated because of the play "Finist Yasny Sokol". It tells about girls who left Russia to marry radical Islamists. The performance was staged in 2020, and in 2022 it received the Golden Mask award in two categories.
Earlier today, pickets were held in the Moscow region in support of both defendants in the case.
In early May, it became known that participants in the National Liberation Movement of Russia had written a denunciation of the performance Finist the Clear Sokol.
Evgenia Berkovich is known not only as a director, but also as a poetess. After the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Berkovich began to write poems about the war, here is one of them:
***
Whether he went through the news,
Whether wine at lunch,
Only at night did his grandfather, who had fought, come to Sergei.
He sat down on an Ikeev stool, blocking the yard with his back
Outside the window. At me, he says, to you,
Serezhenka, conversation.
Could you, my dear, beloved grandson,
Never post anything about me on Facebook?
In no context, neither with the letter z, nor without the letter z,
Just take it and don't do it, the grandfather asks.
No wins in my name
No wins at all.
Likewise, he continues, I would be glad
If you didn't carry me to the parade
I ask you very much, (and does so with his hand),
I don't need a regiment
Neither immortal nor mortal, Serezhenka, none.
Let me go to rest, Seryozha,
I deserve peace.
Yes, I know that you are a hard worker, smart, liberal,
You didn't choose this.
But I didn't choose either!
We've lived our lives
Heavy and one.
Can we no longer
Illustrate you war?
We're all guys
The earth has taken us.
You can somehow yourself.
Somehow from scratch.
We don't need your pride
Not your hidden shame.
I ask you to do so
To finally forget me.
But I'll forget, like in a Russian museum
We were looking for the ninth shaft,
How I woke up wet
And you dressed me
As they read Prishvin,
As they searched for the poles in the atlas,
As you explained to me why in the sky
Such a white line
For any aircraft
How he gave me
Magnifying glass…
Nothing, the grandfather answers,
Disappearing.
It didn't help you either.