The creators of the movie "Yurik" removed it from Youtube after severe criticism from Mariupol residents

A scandal has erupted online over the new feature film Yurik, about a boy from Mariupol who escaped from the besieged city and made his way to his relatives in Estonia on his own. There was so much criticism that the creators changed the film's credits, removed it from YouTube, and promised to revise it.

Source. This was reported by the BBC.

The film is based on real events, but Mariupol residents believe that some moments in the movie, they write, fundamentally contradict what actually happened, and thus form false ideas about the crimes of Russians in Mariupol, downplaying their scale.

After the premiere of the film on STB on August 24, Dmytro Zabavin, a member of the Mariupol City Council, said that he had asked the National Security and Defense Council and the Ministry of Culture to pay attention to the film and whether it threatens national security in this way.

"Yurik is a co-production project commissioned by STB and created by the Ukrainian production company OSNOVAFILM and the Estonian TV channel ETV.

The film tells the story of 11-year-old Yuriy, who lived with his family in Mariupol. During the shelling of the city, the boy's father, grandfather and sister were killed, and he, along with his mother and seriously ill grandmother, hid in the basement of the house.

Yuriy's mother takes a desperate step and sends her son alone to Estonia, where they have relatives. She writes the number of her relatives on the boy's back and puts him on an evacuation bus from Mariupol. On the way, Yuriy meets different people and experiences different situations.

Viewers are outraged that the characters in the film had electricity and water, and were free to move around the city, even though there are many cases captured on video of people being shot at on the streets in Mariupol.

Mariupol residents are surprised by the way the film shows the basements – spacious, bright, dry and warm, with candles or stoves everywhere, beds and cozy clocks ticking.

In addition, the characters in the movie have charged phones and have communication, which did not exist in the blockaded Mariupol.

"It gets worse. OSCE evacuation buses. Clean, white, half-empty. They appear in the frame throughout the movie, calmly inviting residents to leave," Anna Gin writes.

The storyline about the OSCE evacuation, which did not actually take place in Mariupol, is the most criticized by viewers.

The photographer Yevhen Sosnovsky, who spent 62 days in the blockaded city and brought out the famous diary of a 9-year-old boy named Yegor, calls the OSCE vehicle shown in the movie "the cherry on top", from where a loudspeaker invites people to evacuate through a corridor that will supposedly be open from 10 to 18.

"So, it turns out that Mariupol residents are lying when they say that they were sitting in the dark, saving every candle, burning oil lamps, and were without communication. Mariupol residents are lying when they say that there was no organized evacuation, no medical or any other help," Sosnovsky said.

"But Mariupol residents are not lying. And the reality was many times more horrific than even what they are telling us."

The film's team responded to the criticism. The producer of Yurik, Tatiana Kuts, wrote in her commentary under one of the posts that was screened by many journalists that Mariupol residents voted for Russia in the referendum.

The next day, she apologized for her emotions.

Regarding the film, she explained that Yurik is not a documentary or a movie about Mariupol, but "the story of a particular child told in a work of fiction."

According to the producer, the team wanted to avoid people being traumatized by the horrors of the occupation once again.

After the criticism, the film replaced the credits "Based on real events" with a text warning viewers that the film "is purely fictional and does not claim to reflect the real tragedy committed by the occupation forces of the Russian Federation in Mariupol."

Also, the filmmakers say, they will remove any references to the OSCE from the film and instead supplement it with a documentary postscript, which will be created in cooperation with Mariupol residents and the city's defenders.

"We need time for this, and we hope for understanding," they said.

The movie "Yurik" is no longer available on YouTube.

Read about another new film describing what happened in Mariupol after the Russian invasion in Mind's article "Film premieres of the week: 20 Days in Mariupol documentary and The Righteous 3: The Last Chapter".