The film was screened on 6 September after Venice Days cancelled two earlier scheduled screenings after a decree by the Court of Venice, obtained by the companies Viva Film (Russia), Avantura Film (Croatia), and Pygmalion (Cyprus). 

But the court decree was overturned when Venice Days stepped in to defend the filmmaker and presented a counterclaim to the Court of Venice, engaging a team of lawyers made up of Fabio Moretti, Manuela Molinari, and Giulio Berrino, at the international law firm Castaldipartners, which acted in concert with their advisor the attorney Guendalina Pont.

The president of Venice Days, Francesco Ranieri Martinotti said: “The Court of Venice ruled in favour of our claim and explicitly authorised the screening, in recognition of the filmmaker’s moral rights.”

Speaking out earlier in the festival the director of the film Rusudan Glurjidze said she was being censored because of the content of the film which is critical of the Russian government. The film was shot in St Petersburg just before the outbreak of the war in the Ukraine and is about the mass deportations of Georgians from Russia in 2006.

The director of the film Glurjidze said: “The story is set in modern-day St Petersburg during the illegal mass expulsions of Georgian migrants from Russia. It was inspired by real events that caused great distress to my country and me personally. This cruel deportation campaign was aimed exclusively at Georgian citizens. It was the result of an abrupt worsening of already strained political relations between the two countries. In the first few days, 2,680 Georgians were expelled.” The Georgian producer of the majority Georgian production is Cinetech.