Sean Penn: "There was a time when Che Guevara's shirts were changed for Charlie Manson's"

Sean Penn

(Santa Monica, 1970) is already part of the

.

Or at least the international image of him.

When the first missile fell, on February 24, 2022, he was there.

And the world's newscasts gave an account of it between surprise and suspicion, many of them with an undisguised condescending gesture.

But he has stood his ground.

And he is still there.

He was not posturing, or in another way, he was posturing in such an extreme and almost suicidal way that posturing as such suddenly took on a moral dimension.

Who was going to say it?

More about the Berlinale

Cinema.

Paul B. Preciado launches a dazzling and beautiful trans bombshell in the heart of the Berlinale

• Drafting: LUIS MARTÍNEZ Berlin

Paul B. Preciado launches a dazzling and beautiful trans bombshell in the heart of the Berlinale

Now, he has just presented

his long work of filming and commitment at the

.

It's not exactly a documentary in the traditional sense where the narrator disappears.

In truth, it is rather the other way around.

It is more of a diary in which Penn himself immolates himself in a permanent exhibition of himself with one objective: to focus attention on him so that we pay attention to what is happening so far away.

It sounds contradictory and, in reality, it is the world that has long since ceased to make sense.

He attends us in the middle of the festival and appears dressed as in the film.

He, in effect, is still there, in the film.

You knew Vladimir Putin personally and you talk about it in the film.

I wonder if at some point he felt the same fascination for him that others seem to have felt... Well, that was a chance meeting at the festival directed by Nikita Mikhalkov.

We knew that Putin was going to be the guest of honor and Jack Nicholson, myself and a few others turned up.

I remember they put us in a convoy and we went through the villages at full speed.

The security personnel of our vehicles were shouting through the windows and began to beat anyone who dared to cross the road.

It was an unnecessarily aggressive and gratuitous display of power.

The general feeling was anything but fascinated.

It was an ugly and very cold feeling.

And I think this may be one of the most important factors to take into account when the war is over and Ukraine emerges victorious: How do you restore illusion to a people like the Russians who have been subjugated for so long?

If all your effort goes into surviving the day, how are you going to allow yourself to dream? Since you started shooting in Kiev in February 2022 to now, and after so many trips to the conflict, how would you say you have changed? I will say that it was in Ukraine where I felt closest to the idea of ​​the United States that I admire and that, unfortunately, my country has been losing all this time.

I speak of the value of the community.

You see how they take care of each other while they are being harassed and there, in that gesture of mutual protection, you discover the true meaning of democracy.

There is space to criticize, to debate,

and you witness how many Ukrainians openly criticize their president.

But they do it freely and without fear, because they know that at the moment of truth they fight and live for the same thing.

And I'm not referring to the armies or the combatants, I'm talking about everyone, any civilian you find on the street.

They know what freedom is and it seems clear that they are not going to give it up. How do you imagine the end of the war?

In the film there is constant talk about the Ukrainian victory, about winning the war.

Don't you think that this is the worst possible attitude towards a nuclear power like Russia?

Don't you think that such an aggressive vocabulary should be replaced by another that includes words like agreement, peace, mutual recognition? Let's see, this is the story of a country invaded by an aggressor country.

This is the story of massacred civilians,

of children murdered with their mothers, of broken families.

The conversation cannot be about land swapping or how many war crimes the world is willing to forgive.

No, that is not like that.

What should be talked about is how much we are willing to sacrifice all of us so that these heroes win the war and we with them.

Only by winning the war will there be peace.

That is the only way out. But it seems that he does not take into account the nuclear missiles... The problem is believing that there is a conversation going on.

And there isn't.

The only thing here is an invasion and people risking everything to be able to live in peace. Where is politics then? What you can't do is make the same mistakes as in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.

Putin made a show of force and was acquiesced in.

One of the interviewees in the documentary finds the key.

He says that he doesn't want to live in a world where he commands a nuke-wielding thug.

On the other hand, all analysts agree that the probability of Russia using the atomic sandbox is very low.

No one can predict for sure what will happen, but we have two choices: show the world that nuke-armed thugs win, or take our chances and fight for the life we ​​all deserve. Why were you so interested in Zelensky long before you even started war?

What did you see in him that many Ukrainians were incapable at first? The main thing is that he is a person who talks about things that are perfectly understandable to everyone: anger, injustice.

He is an ordinary man who one day decides to follow his instinct to help others.

Then I saw him stand firm against people like Trump or Putin himself... Do you like him as an actor? The important thing is that when everyone assumed that he would leave and be safe, he stayed. Zelenski, like It is clear, he is an actor turned politician.

Will we soon see the same transition in the case of Sean Penn? No. Why? I'm one of those people who likes to wake up at three in the morning one day and 11 the next. active with the insane schedule that I have [he laughs]. In your film you, who pass for being a banner of liberalism and progressivism, meet with very conservative politicians and journalists... Too many things have happened in my country to allow us to the luxury of political puritanism.

You have to change things and speak from the concrete problems and not from the ideological trenches.

To one of those I interviewed, I openly told him that I did not trust him, but I also made it clear that if we find a point on which we agree, fine.Putin was honored by far-right parties in Europe and in USA.

Do you think it is time to hold many of these politicians accountable? There are very strange things.

For example, Ukrainians are not granted refugee status in Israel while Russia is killing Ukrainian Jews with Iranian drones.

How the hell does that happen?

So, yes, I think many politicians should be called to their contradictions and nonsense.

There are even stranger things.

Many American conservatives sympathize with Putin for the simple reason that they are against the government.

For as long as I can remember, in my country the Russians have been demonized and now this is happening.

It's crazy.

With Trump we came to sign an agreement with North Korea.

To be sure, we've been too lenient with our own social media-obsessed bullshit for far too long.

We have reached a moment in the world in which Che Guevara's shirts were exchanged for Charlie Manson's.

It was a collective hallucination similar to that of Nazi Germany.

And looking at it, it's not just a matter of my country. What is your superpower? I have two children who enlighten me every day.

With Trump we came to sign an agreement with North Korea.

To be sure, we've been too lenient with our own social media-obsessed bullshit for far too long.

We have reached a moment in the world in which Che Guevara's shirts were exchanged for Charlie Manson's.

It was a collective hallucination similar to that of Nazi Germany.

And looking at it, it's not just a matter of my country. What is your superpower? I have two children who enlighten me every day.

With Trump we came to sign an agreement with North Korea.

To be sure, we've been too lenient with our own social media-obsessed bullshit for far too long.

We have reached a moment in the world in which Che Guevara's shirts were exchanged for Charlie Manson's.

It was a collective hallucination similar to that of Nazi Germany.

And looking at it, it's not just a matter of my country. What is your superpower? I have two children who enlighten me every day.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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• War Ukraine Russia

• Volodimir Zelensky

• cinema