Dictators will die, Ukranian President quotes Charlie Chaplin

UKRAINE, RUSSIA: As the 75th Cannes Film Festival kicked off in France on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a surprise appearance via video link. In a live satellite video address from Kyiv, he asked for the cinema world’s solidarity with the Ukrainians in the face of the Russian invasion.

During the festival’s opening ceremony, Zelenskyy spoke at length about the connection between cinema and reality, referencing films like Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” as not unlike Ukraine’s present circumstances. Zelenskyy quoted Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film ‘The Great Dictator’, saying: “The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

“We need a new Chaplin who will demonstrate that the cinema of our time is not silent,” implored Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who drew a standing ovation.

Meanwhile, Ukraine evacuated its soldiers from the steel plant in the pivotal city that had become a last holdout against weeks of attacks, effectively ceding the city to Russia.

The soldiers had been in the Azovstal steel plant for weeks, with many of them wounded and without adequate supplies of food and water.

The steel plant was the last major point of resistance in the Mariupol, which was surrounded by Russian early in its invasion of Ukraine and subject to relentless attacks. – INDIA TODAY