MOSCOW, July 20. /TASS/. The current political climate should not affect the Russian Oscar committee that will nominate a Russian movie for the next Academy Awards, renowned film director, script writer and producer Andrey Konchalovsky said in an interview with TASS.

"As long as the Oscars exist, there needs to be a [Russian] Oscar committee," said Konchalovsky, who used to be a member of the aforementioned panel. "All the usual steps need to be taken, which include nominating our movies and trying to show them to the world. It makes sense as an incentive for young people," he insisted.

That said, the film director succinctly expressed his attitude to the awards. "The dance is over but people haven’t realized it yet," Konchalovsky said. "They are still dancing though the music is no longer playing."

"The Oscar audience included half of the world 20 years ago," Konchalovsky went on to say. "It had commercial effects. And now, all this is shrinking, people are starting to lose interest in the Oscars. I think that people’s interest will continue to decline," he predicted. The veteran movie director was confident that "managers in the world film industry are so scared of the need to be politically correct that it’s very hard to talk about great discoveries."

Russia’s Oscar committee is expected to nominate the country’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in the fall of 2022. The 95th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 12, 2023.