AceShowbiz - Filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov is hoping to appear at the Cannes Film Festival virtually after Russian lawmakers banned him from leaving the country to promote his new movie, "Petrov's Flu".

The film is in competition at Cannes, but Kirill, who is battling fraud charges back home, won't be there to celebrate.

"I'm not allowed to leave Russia for some time, but the global situation is not good for travelling anyway," he tells Deadline. "Russia is now in the red zone and the number of sick people here is very high. The vaccination rollout is going very slowly."

"First it's my personal circumstances, then the virus situation, and then also I am shooting a film right now, so I cannot afford to lose 10 days to quarantine."

He first started working on "Petrov's Flu" while he was under house arrest in Moscow, adding, "The novel was highly acclaimed; it won all possible Russian literature awards. (Producer) Ilya (Stewart) bought the rights, but how do you work with this very strange book? It's surreal and multi-layered, complicated, but extraordinary literature in terms of language... It's a masterpiece. So how to transform it into a movie?"

"I was under house arrest and Ilya told me, 'You have a lot of time, could you think about how to do something with it?' I jumped into it and it grabbed me completely. It is poetry, the author is a poet who started to write prose, the construction of the text is poetic - and cinema is poetry."

"The producers loved the script and started to look for a director to make it. But then my circumstances changed, I was released, and I had time to work. And then my trial started, I said, 'Let's do it anyway'. I had a month or two months without sleeping - part of the day was the trial and then we shot at night. The days were short. The crew and actors understood what was happening and helped a lot."

He's still awaiting a virtual invite for Cannes, stating, "If they ask me I definitely will (appear)."