The other day in Moscow they awarded the White Elephant award to an actor who escaped from Russia Alexandru Filippenko. He has long criticized Russian policies and supported Ukraine. Where does the once popular actor live?
What position does Filippenko take?
79-year-old actor Filippenko, the main villain of first the Soviet and later the Russian stage, is familiar to many from his roles as Koshchei the Immortal (the fairy tale “There, on Unknown Paths”), Death (in the rock opera Vladimir Grammatikov), Azazello and Korovieva in “The Master and Margarita” first Yuri Karaand later Vladimir Bortko.
Filippenko has long been known for his critical position regarding the current Russian government – over the past ten years he has taken part in many protests. In 2014, he categorically opposed the reunification of Crimea with Russia, and in 2022 he posted a photo of himself wearing a Ukrainian embroidered shirt on social networks.
Filippenko’s position regarding the holding of the SVO led to the fact that the organizers of his concerts in Russia began to be denied approval for venues. Essentially, the actor was left without a main source of income. As a result, in November of the same year, he resigned from the Mossovet State Academic Theater, where he had recently served, and went to Lithuania. As it became known a year later, in order to “come to my senses and forget all this nasty stuff.”
In his social networks, Alexander Filippenko was showered with gratitude for the awardHow does an actor live and what does he earn?
After fleeing Russia, the actor does the same thing as other fugitive artists – touring with his “creative evenings” in European countries and the republics of the former USSR. In February of this year, I even visited my homeland – Kazakhstan.
In addition, he actively cooperates with the Latvian organizer of performances “Direct Speech” (Pryamaya OÜ), on whose platforms he now regularly appears Dmitry Bykov And Leonid Parfenov.
In the Baltics there are sites dedicated to providing income for the “fugitive intelligentsia.” You can also see Alexander Filippenko on themIn March 2023, in Riga, he took part in a reading of Arthur Solomonov’s essentially Russophobic play “How We Buried Joseph Vissarionovich.” Judging by the inscription on the poster, the money collected during the production was supposed to go to help Ukraine.
On social networks, Filippenko often posts photographs of home gatherings with other Russian fugitives – actress Chulpan Khamatova, director Dmitry Krymov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov. Among others, there is actor Veniamin Smekhov.
In the company of Filippenko you can often see such outspoken Russophobes as, for example, Anatoly BelyHow the Filippenko family lives in Russia
In Russia, at least formally, Filippenko lived quite modestly: he has a small apartment in Moscow with an area of only 55 square meters. But in the very center of the capital – right on Patriki.
His daughters also settled in well. The eldest, 44-year-old Maria, first worked at school as a teacher of Latin and German, and later as a senior teacher at the German language department at the Higher School of Economics, which has long been called the most liberal university in the country and the abode of the fifth column. At the same time, she worked part-time in various management positions at IKEA.
Maria has a 100-meter apartment in the Kurkino district with a market value of about 30 million rubles and a dacha with an area of 150 square meters in Solnechnogorsk near Moscow.
The youngest daughter, Alexandra, is a graduate of MGIMO, a candidate of science, an expert on US domestic policy and a senior researcher at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The same one whose director, Valery Garbuzov, wrote a long article last fall about the global dominance of the United States in the world, about the “imperial complexes” of Russia and the “atmosphere of pseudo-patriotic madness” reigning in it. After this, the director, of course, was fired, and various fugitive foreign agents – political scientists and journalists – immediately raised a wave that the dismissal, they say, marked the “death of the expert intelligentsia” in Russia.
Alexandra Filippenko, the actor’s youngest daughter, often appears on European Russian-language (and not only) television channelsAfter the start of the SVO in 2022, 38-year-old Alexandra left Russia for Lithuania – it was her father who later came to her in Vilnius. She is a political commentator for “independent Russian, Ukrainian and international media,” including TV channels Dozhd, France24, Current Time, FreeDom, Radio Liberty**, TRT World and Living Nail (formerly Ekho Moskvy).
In Moscow, the girl left housing located right next door to the house of Filippenko Sr. – in Spiridonyevsky Lane, almost opposite the Patriarch’s Ponds. Here, on the fifth floor of one of the Stalin buildings, there is a four-room apartment with an area of 108 square meters. These on the market are now valued at more than 100 million rubles. In addition to Alexandra, the current wife of Alexander Filippenko, Marina Ishimbaeva, is also registered here.
Recently, the artist’s daughter drove her father’s Mini Cooper Countryman, painted in the colors of the British flag.
What is the White Elephant Award?
Initially, the film award was established to support arthouse cinema in Russia, as well as documentaries and animated films that are usually not released on the wide screen. However, in recent years, in fact, it has turned into an opposition cabal, from which at some point even the nominees fled.
In 2021, director Andrei Konchalovsky demanded that his film “Dear Comrades!” be removed from the award. However, then the award’s expert council not only did not listen to Konchalovsky’s wishes, but even awarded the work.
The director’s decision came against the backdrop of a big scandal, when the jury received a proposal to give a special prize “Event of the Year” to oppositionist Alexei Navalny for a series of “innovative investigative documentaries” with a political orientation.
Filippenko’s eldest daughter Maria is friends with the famous Russophobe Arkady BabchenkoThen the Russian Union of Cinematographers published a release in which they stated that “some politicized colleagues (members of the Guild of Film Scholars and Film Critics, including former ones) are trying to impose unipolarity on the members of our organization”.
Filmmakers accused the expert council of presenting their own political position as a general one, and “political manifestos” as artistic interpretation.
