Chechen leader to star in two films – one Hollywood, one human rights exposé

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/26/chechen-leader-hollywood-ramzan-kadyrov

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Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is starring in two films – one a Hollywood thriller featuring the camouflage-clad hero firing a machine gun into the sky and the other a sombre documentary accusing him of human rights abuses.

The upcoming feature, which Kadyrov announced on his personal Instagram page today, is to be called Whoever Doesn’t Understand Will Get It.

“It’s a hard-hitting piece in which, after lengthy negotiations, I have agreed to play the role of the main hero. … The director is the author of famous Hollywood films,” Kadyrov wrote on Instagram. The trailer announces that the movie will be shown in cinemas across Russia.

A series of scandals in recent months have propelled Kadyrov to the forefront of Russian politics. The Chechen strongman appears to answer only to Vladimir Putin, to whom he frequently and publicly expresses his adoration.

He is being portrayed less flatteringly in a short documentary financed by former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which alleges widespread human rights violations in Chechnya and accuses Kadyrov of having a personal army of up to 80,000 fighters and skimming off huge quantities of federal funds.

The film, which Khodorkovsky said was the reason behind police raids on the offices of his Open Russia Foundation last month, catalogued abuses in Chechnya and featured interviews with prominent Russian journalists, NGO workers and political analysts.

“This is a person that has made Chechnya into his own feudal domain,” Khodorkovsky said in the film, entitled Family.

The 26-minute documentary also catalogues beatings and murders reportedly linked to Chechen security forces and alleges that every Chechen is forced to make a contribution to a personal fund from which Kadyrov buys expensive presents and pays foreign celebrity visitors.

The movie shows old television interviews where Putin describes Kadyrov as a “son” and Kadyrov, with tears in his eyes, pledges his allegiance to the Russian president.