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This Abandoned 267-Foot Superyacht Has Links to a Russian Oligarch. Now It’s Heading to Auction.

Alfa nero will be sold to the highest bidder if it remains unclaimed., rachel cormack.

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“A notice to the newspapers and other media will be published for a period of 10 days, notifying the sale of the Alfa Nero vessel in order to satisfy the requirements under the law for a forced sale,” a statement from the Office of the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda read. “If the owner fails to claim the vessel within that time period, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda will sell it to the highest bidder.”

Delivered in 2007 by Oceanco, Alfa Nero features a striking exterior by Nuvolari Lenard and interior styling by Alberto Pinto that together have landed the yacht a number of awards. The beautiful behemoth notably features six staterooms, accommodation for 28 crew, a hydraulically operated pool and a large helipad aft. Alfa Nero was sold in 2011 to its current owner with an asking price of $115 million, according to Marine Industry News . The Guardian has previously reported that the yacht is linked to the Russian oligarch (and Putin ally) Andrey Guryev.

The Antigua and Barbuda government reportedly consulted with the US authorities prior to taking the action. During a media briefing, Information Minister Melford Nicholas told reporters that any proceeds from the sale of Alfa Nero would remain in the Antiguan government’s hands, but the US could request access to the funds in the future.

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

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Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt paid $67 million for a superyacht abandoned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch

• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt paid $67.6 million at auction for a 267-foot superyacht. 
• The boat was left moored in Antigua Bay by Andrey Guryev, a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
• Bloomberg reported that Guryev's daughter tried to stop the auction by claiming ownership. 

Billionaire and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt won an auction Friday for the 267-foot Alfa Nero, paying $67.6 million for the superyacht that had been "abandoned" in Antigua Bay by a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

The Antigua and Barbuda Port Authority revealed the sale in a statement reported by outlets including Boat International .

Antigua's ambassador to the US, Sir Ronald Sanders, said the buyer was Schmidt, Bloomberg reported.

The yacht was linked to Andrey Guryev, who made his money in the fertilizer business and was sanctioned last year by the US Treasury Department following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Guryev is believed to have close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Guryev's daughter had tried to intervene to stop the auction, according to Bloomberg, by claiming she owned the yacht. 

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Her action came despite a legal representative for Guryev telling Bloomberg in March that he did not own the yacht.

"Mr Guryev neither owns nor controls the Alfa Nero and has simply used the vessel from time to time under commercial charter since 2014," his representative told the outlet .

Officials in Antigua were eager to sell the yacht, as upkeep and maintenance was costing more than $110,000 a month while it was docked in Falmouth Harbor. 

Schmidt was the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, and stepped down as chairman of Google parent Alphabet in 2018.

Bloomberg ranks him at number 60 on its Billionaires Index, with a net worth of about $25 billion.

His new yacht has a pool that converts into a helipad, among other amenities. 

Some of the proceeds will go towards paying the Alfa Nero's captain and crew, and suppliers, per Boat International. 

Representatives for Schmidt didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours. 

On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.

Watch: The rise and fall of Russian oligarchs

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Antigua and Barbuda to auction off $81m yacht ‘owned by Russian oligarch’

Andrey Guryev, who has been put under UK government sanctions, claims he is not owner of Alfa Nero

An $81m (£67m) superyacht said to be owned by the sanctioned Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev is to be auctioned off by the government of Antigua and Barbuda , which claims the vessel has been abandoned in the Caribbean since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda on Monday warned the owner of the Alfa Nero superyacht that they had 10 days to claim the vessel or it would be sold to the highest bidder.

The information minister, Melford Nicholas, said Alfa Nero had been abandoned in Falmouth harbour in Antigua since February 2022 and the government was “trying to prevent a future hazard since the luxury vessel is not being maintained by its owner”.

In a statement the office of the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda said: “A notice to the newspapers and other media will be published for a period of 10 days, notifying the sale of the Alfa Nero vessel in order to satisfy the requirements under the law for a forced sale. If the owner fails to claim the vessel within that time period, the government of Antigua and Barbuda will sell it to the highest bidder.”

Guryev, 62, who made a $10bn fortune from the Russian fertiliser company PhosAgro, is the owner of Alfa Nero according to the US government, which imposed sanctions on him last year. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said it had “identified Alfa Nero, a Cayman islands flagged yacht that AG Guryev reportedly bought for $120m in 2014, as blocked property of AG Guryev”.

The yacht, which features a 12-metre infinity pool, a Jacuzzi, a spa, a beauty room and a helipad, has been used by Guryev’s family, including his son (also Andrey) and his son’s wife, Valeria, who studied at the London College of Fashion and once reportedly stated on Instagram that she was “too pretty for work”. Like many yachts, it is owned via an opaque offshore structure, and Guryev has denied being the owner.

Guryev, who was subjected to UK government sanctions in April 2022 , is also, according to the OFAC, the owner of London’s largest private residence: the 25-bedroom £50m Highgate mansion Witanhurst.

The property is officially owned via Boradge Ltd, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Guryev’s London-based lawyers have said “Mr Guryev does not own Witanhurst”, without providing further details. Guryev’s spokesperson has previously told the New Yorker that he was a beneficiary of a trust owning the property but not the legal owner.

Last year Gibraltar auctioned off the £65m superyacht Axioma owned by the sanctioned steel billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky. The sale of Axioma attracted controversy because it is being sold not for the benefit of the Ukrainian people but for a US investment bank, JP Morgan, which claims Pumpyansky owes it more than €20.5m (£17m).

Pumpyansky was until March of 2022 the owner and chairman of the steel pipe manufacturer OAO TMK, a supplier to the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. The UK said the billionaire, who it said had built up an estimated £1.84bn fortune, was one of the oligarchs “closest to Putin” .

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Ex-google ceo eric schmidt wins russian oligarch’s superyacht for $67.6m at auction.

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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt sailed off with the superyacht abandoned in the Caribbean by its Russian oligarch owner after the invasion of Ukraine with a winning $67.6 million bid during an auction Friday.

Schmidt bought the 267-foot Alfa Nero yacht after it was left moored in Antigua by Andrey Guryev, the Russian billionaire who was slapped with sanctions by the US Treasury last year, according to Bloomberg News.

The Treasury Department claimed that Guryev, who made his fortune in the fertilizer industry and is thought to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, initially bought the yacht for $120 million in 2014, but the Russian oligarch has denied the claim.

The former Google boss, whose net worth was valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $25 billion as of Friday, “won the auction this morning in a fully transparent process,” according to Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua’s ambassador to the US.

The vessel, which has been described by its manufacturer Oceanco as “one of the world’s most iconic and highly awarded yachts,” includes amenities such as a baby grand piano and a swimming pool that converts into a helipad, Bloomberg News reported.

Antigua and Barbuda was eager to sell the vessel due to mounting maintenance costs totaling some $112,000 per month that accumulated while it sat in Falmouth Harbor.

Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, a time of rapid growth for the California-based technology company.

He later became executive chairman for Google, and in 2015, for its new parent company, Alphabet, before resigning as chairman in 2018.

The US and other Western countries sanctioned several Russian oligarchs following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

An Antiguan port official told Bloomberg News that Guryev’s daughter filed a last-minute injunction claiming ownership of the yacht.

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Inside the Wild International Battle Over An Abandoned Superyacht

I n an inlet in Antigua, surrounded by touristy hotels and kitschy cafes, a yacht nearly three times the size of a basketball court and twice the price of a luxury private jet sits unused, awaiting its fate.

The Alfa Nero, one of the largest superyachts in the world, is the reported—but not confirmed— property of Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev, a top target of sanctions imposed by the U.S. after the invasion of Ukraine last year. Thanks to a tangled mess of international restrictions and offshore ownership, its future is now the subject of a three-way battle between Guryev’s daughter, the government of Antigua and Barbuda, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt . And none of them know where the Alfa Nero will be this time next year.

“This whole damn thing has been like a Tom Clancy novel,” Darwin Telemaque, chief executive of the Antigua and Barbuda Port Authority, told the London Times last month. “And I’m stuck in the middle.”

The Alfa Nero was constructed in 2007 for Greek shipping and steel magnate Theodore Angelopolous by Oceanco, the same company that built Jeff Bezos’ $500 million megayacht. The ship, which is 269 feet long, boasts three double cabins, two VIP cabins, a master suite, a living area, a gym, an office, two hot tubs, and a pool that converts into a helicopter landing pad. The interior features a nautical theme, with imagery like seashells and staghorn coral; its current owners have further adorned it with artwork by Joan Miró and a baby grand piano.

Angelopolous put the yacht up for sale multiple times between 2009 and 2014, when— according to the U.S. Treasury —Guryev purchased it for $120 million. Guryev, however, has denied owning the yacht, telling Bloomberg he “neither owns nor controls the Alfa Nero” and simply leases it for commercial charter “from time to time.”

Guryev is the 25th richest man in Russia, and an incredibly private one. Raised in a small town outside Moscow, he trained to be a martial artist and for a time taught judo to USSR sports authorities. He worked in local politics and at a major bank before founding PhosAgro, the biggest manufacturer of phosphate fertilizers in Europe, skyrocketing his net worth to an estimated $9.6 billion.

According to a New Yorker profile, Guryev is the likely owner of Witanhurst, the second-largest home in London after Buckingham Palace, though he has denied this, too. Despite working in politics on and off throughout his life and serving as a Russian senator for over a decade, he has never given an interview or made a speech in the federal legislature. His family is equally private; the most public attention they have received is when his daughter-in-law, Valeria Guryeva, posted on Instagram that she was “too pretty for work,” sparking international headlines.

That is, until 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Guryev was placed on the top list of Russians sanctioned by the U.S. and U.K. Suddenly, anything the billionaire was said to own was under strict scrutiny—including the Alfa Nero.

At the time, the ship was docked at Falmouth Harbour in Saint Paul Parish, Antigua. In August, the U.S. sent a team of FBI agents to search the vessel and concluded it belonged to Guryev through a complicated series of offshore companies that traced back to his control. (Another Russian businessman, Alexander Mavrodi, tried to claim the yacht was his, but the government dismissed this as “either a hoax or … a deliberate fabrication.”) Guryev maintained that the yacht did not belong to him.

As the war continued and the sanctions dragged on, the Alfa Nero sat unclaimed, burning through diesel and taking up space in the yacht club marina. The original 44 crew members were winnowed down to six, who passed their time lounging in lawn chairs on the deck or playing “Call of Duty” in the master suite, according to Bloomberg . Twenty-five members sued for millions in unpaid wages over the spring.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda, meanwhile, started to get antsy. Prime Minister Agston Browne complained the yacht was a security risk: It could spring a leak, catch fire, or set off any other number of calamities. “The yachting sector contributes more to our economy than even the cruise tourism sector,” he told the Antigua Observer . “Understand the reputational damage if we fail to act and we end up with a major catastrophe.”

Finally, in March, the islands’ government declared that the owner of the yacht had 10 days to claim it before it was auctioned to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going toward Antigua and Barbuda’s national debt. In April, the vessel was officially seized, and in June, the U.S. Treasury Department removed it from its list of blocked property. According to the Times , the government heard from 30 interested buyers, 16 of whom could prove they had the cash on hand and six of whom passed money-laundering checks. The final bids were submitted in sealed envelopes to the accountant general of the Antiguan treasury.

On June 16, the Anitguan government announced Schmidt, who is worth an estimated $20.4 billion, had the winning bid at $67.6 million—a 4 percent bump to the country’s gross domestic product. The former Google honcho, who owns another 195-foot yacht and a $20 million private plane, was instructed to make payment within seven days. Telemaque, the port executive, was thrilled. “I just want to see it gone,” he told the Times .

He may have spoken too soon.

In late May, a month before the auction, lawyers for a company called Flying Dutchman Overseas Limited filed suit in the Supreme Court of Antigua and Barbuda claiming it owns the Alfa Nero and had tried to assert ownership of it in the days before its seizure. It asked the court to block the sale, claiming officials had ignored its repeated attempts to lay claim to the boat. The judge on the case agreed that there may have been “procedural unfairness” in the seizure, but refused to stop the sale. Schmidt’s purchase went through eight days later.

But just this month, another obstacle appeared: Guryev’s daughter, Yulia Guryeva-Motlokhov, who lives in London with her hedge-fund manager husband Alexei Motlokhov. (The two recently caused a stir for trying to build a massive playground in the backyard of their $6 million, five-bedroom home, which neighbors deemed “more like a theme park.”) In an appeal filed July 12, Guryeva-Motlokhov claimed she is the sole beneficiary of the trust that owns the Flying Dutchman, and thus the rightful owner of the Alfa Nero.

In her appeal, she claimed that the Antiguan government did not have the right to sell off her property and that the auction had been improperly executed, according to the Antigua Observer .

Her attorney, David Dorsett, told the Observer he intends to fight for her right to the superyacht, adding: “We just want our boat back.”

“We think the action of the government in taking possession of the yacht and selling the yacht is wrong on all levels,” he said. “It is not the government’s yacht; they cannot just take it up and sell it to somebody else.”

The government hit back with a counter-appeal of its own last week, arguing that Guryeva-Motlokhov had no standing in the case.

The attorney general, Steadroy Benjamin, told The Daily Beast the two sides were in court over the matter on July 18 but declined to answer any further questions. Dorsett did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Schmidt, meanwhile, is reportedly withholding payment until the matter is resolved. The government of Antigua and Barbuda is scrambling to get him to pay up, even offering to indemnify him from any future liabilities created by the suits. The country’s parliament is scheduled to vote on approving these legal guarantees soon, with the hope of expediting the sales process.

Information Minister Melford Nicholas told reporters earlier this month that the government is “certainly committed to executing the Alfa Nero sale,” but growing anxious.

“A legal position is that we should wait until all legal proceedings are done,” he said at a press conference July 9, according to the Carribean Times . “The question is, how much time can we reasonably afford?”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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World’s most expensive sailing superyacht sits abandoned

The world’s most expensive superyacht, owned by a Russian oligarch, has remained stranded in the sea for almost two years.

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A Russian oligarch’s $860 million superyacht, seized by Italian police, has sat abandoned in the sea for almost two years.

The boat was nabbed in March 2022 as part of ongoing EU sanctions against Russia amid Vladimir Putin’s failing war in Ukraine.

It has remained stranded in the Trieste Gulf, off the coast of Italy, ever since, The Sun reports.

The superyacht is owned by Russian tycoon and Putin crony Andrey Melnichenko, one of a number of businessmen targeted under war sanctions.

Dubbed Sailing Yacht A, it is among the largest in the world – measuring 100 metres high and 143 metres long.

It underwent testing in Gibraltar in 2017 before it was handed over to Melnichenko.

The boat’s mast is bigger than Big Ben’s Tower by 10 feet and it’s even deemed a medium-sized cargo ship.

It has eight decks, a helicopter pad, an underwater observation room and a hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system.

Run by a crew of 54, the yacht also has a digital control system that allows them to raise and lowers the sails and anchor just by swiping.

And it has the power to dash across waves at speeds of up to 20.8 knots.

The unconventional yacht was built by German Naval Yards, in Nobiskrug.

Now it sits impounded in a dry dock with a constant crew of 20 and Italian media reports that the government has spent over £6 million ($11.5 million) keeping it there.

Police cars with flashing lights reportedly swarmed the yacht and boarded it before impounding the vessel in 2022.

Melnichenko owns fertiliser company EuroChem Group and SUEK, a coal company.

He made headlines for his impressive ships when he moored his other £240 million masterpiece, “Motor Yacht A”, on London’s River Thames near Tower Bridge in 2017.

The tycoon is one of the richest men in the world and was one of 37 businessmen who met with Putin after the invasion of Ukraine to discuss potential sanctions.

An EU document described him as belonging “to the most influential circle of Russian businesspeople with close connections to the Russian government”, according to The Guardian .

It went on: “He is therefore involved in economic sectors providing a substantial source of revenue to the government of the Russian Federation, which is responsible for the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine.”

Both companies said Melnichenko had resigned just days before his yacht was seized in 2022.

A spokesperson for Melnichenko at the time said the businessman had “no relation to the tragic events in Ukraine. He has no political affiliations”.

“There is no justification whatsoever for placing him on the EU sanctions list,” Alex Andreev said.

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“We will be disputing these baseless and unjustified sanctions, and believe that the rule of law and common sense will prevail.”

Italian police have apparently seized over $230 million worth of luxury boats and homes owned by Russian billionaires.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission

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Superyacht abandoned in the Caribbean to be sold to 'highest bidder' if not claimed by owner

11 March 2023, 01:12 | Updated: 11 March 2023, 01:37

By Chris Samuel

A multi-million pound superyacht abandoned in the Caribbean is set to be sold "to the highest bidder" if it isn't claimed by its owner, the government of Antigua and Barbuda has said.

The US Department of the Treasury has linked The Alfa Nero to Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev, whom the department says is a "close associate" of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Guryev, 62, made a $10billion fortune from a Russian fertiliser firm, but was sanctioned by the US, the UK and the EU from last year.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several Russian oligarchs have been hit with sanctions by various countries, with bank accounts frozen, and assets including superyachts seized.

It led to some oligarchs moving their yachts into no extradition waters to prevent them being impounded.

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Guryev has denied being the owner of the super yacht and as with many multi-million-pound pleasure vessels, it is owned through a complex offshore structure.

The Alfa Nero was abandoned in Falmouth Harbour, on the southern coast of Antigua, in February 2022, soon after the Ukraine invasion began.

Officials on the island say the auction is being held in order “to prevent a future hazard since the luxury vessel is not being maintained by its owner".

The government of Antigua and Barbuda has said that any potential owner has 10 days to claim the yacht, or it will be auctioned off.

“If the owner fails to claim the vessel within that time period, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda will sell it to the highest bidder," the office of the Prime Minister said.

The vast private motoryacht was built in 2007 and has has a number of opulent features, including a 40ft infinity pool, a jacuzzi, and a gym.

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The Sad Story of an Abandoned Superyacht

The 147-foot Bella T superyacht, built for an American industrialist in 1973 and once owned by a sultan in Malaysia, is in a state of disrepair in Cape Town, South Africa. With multiple changes of names and owners, unpaid and overdue yard bills, lawsuits and countersuits, the yacht, which once hosted the first series of the TV show Survivor , now will be put up for a court-ordered auction on March 1.

The yacht originally was the dream of Roy Carver, who made a fortune in the tire retreading business. He hired Arthur de Fever and Doug Sharp to design it, and the Maritima de Axpe yard in Bilbao, Spain, to build it.

But Axpe took too long and Carver was impatient. He turned to Feadship in the Netherlands to build a yacht using the same design and specs. It delivered the yacht in 1975.

Meanwhile, Axpe completed the original yacht in 1976. It has a steel hull, an aluminum superstructure and it can hold 16 guests in six cabins, plus ten crew. It’s powered by twin 750-hp Cat D348TA diesels, with a top speed of 15 knots and a cruising speed of 13 knots. Range: 1,650 nm. It has a beam of 15’ 7”, a draft of 11’ 8” and a displacement of 348 tons.

Axpe sold the boat to the Sultan of Sabah in Malaysia, who subsequently sold it to another Malaysian owner who named it Sipadan Princess . It was sold again to Earl Romans, an American, and renamed Summit One . In 2001, it was taken from Malaysia to the Farocean yard in Cape Town, South Africa, for a refit. The hull was lengthened by 16 feet and the yacht was renamed the Bella T .

But Farocean said Romans didn’t make payments, and it halted work in 2003. After some legal issues, the yacht was sold to a company in Dubai and then to Nautic Africa; Europa Shipping bought it five years ago.

After more legal issues, last year a South Africa court ordered the Bella T to be auctioned. The hull is now stripped back to steel, and engine parts, props and many interior items are in containers. In 2020, the Maritime Bureau of Africa said the engines were in good condition. The public auction is being handled by Solution Strategists, which specializes in yacht sales. Read more:

https://www.businessinsider.co.za/cursed-superyacht-in-cape-town-goes-to-auction-2022-1

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Abandoned superyacht that burns $2,000 of fuel daily just to keep A/C running sparks outrage: ‘Who is paying?’

The superyachts of the super-rich are super problematic.

In a recent example, the abandoned Alfa Nero has been burning $2,000 daily to keep the air conditioning running.

In a recent post to the r/Anticonsumption subreddit, a Redditor wrote, “This popped up on my feed” above a picture and then reposted an article about the yacht’s excess. Below the picture, the OP wrote: “consume consume consume.”

“If it is abandoned, who is paying 2k each day?” asked another user.

As Jalopnik reports , the Alfa Nero was abandoned by a Russian oligarch , seized by Antigua , then sold to a former Google CEO , but that sale fell through earlier this month — leaving Antigua on the hook for the boat’s maintenance.

While the ship can’t sail, to maintain its hardwood floors and leather interiors, the air conditioning has to run 24/7 — meaning its diesel generators also have to run constantly. This leads the boat to burn through $2,000 of gas a day.

“You can’t even open the doors on Alfa Nero without diesel,” said Tom Paterson, the dockmaster at the Antigua Yacht Club. “These boats, from the day they launch to the day they die, are burning fossil fuels.”

Joe Fassler further writes for The New York Times that the super rich pollute far more than the rest of us — the wealthiest 1% create more than double the amount of planet-warming pollution as the bottom 50%, according to the Guardian — and luxury travel is one of the biggest parts of that footprint.

Fassler reports for the Times that more than 5,500 private boats worldwide are considered superyachts, and the 300 biggest of these create a combined 315,000 tons of carbon pollution annually.

While companies like Austria-based Silent-Yachts specialize in luxury solar-powered vessels, another solution is holding the uber-rich accountable for the impact of their lifestyles — something Disney heiress Abigail Disney did in a thread on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Times points to a bigger issue of this behavior, as stated by cognitive scientists Nicolas Baumard and Coralie Chevallier in Le Monde last year, who said people may stop trying to reduce their pollution footprint when others are not doing their part.

“If some people are allowed to emit 10 times as much carbon for their comfort,” Baumard and Chevallier asked , as quoted in The New York Times, “then why restrict your meat consumption, turn down your thermostat or limit your purchases of new products?”

As to more altruistic ways these billionaires could spend their money, one commenter on the Jalopnik article said astutely, “Isn’t there a seabed out there somewhere in need of a reef?”

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‘Oh, Canada’ Review: Paul Schrader Separates the Art From the Artist in Prismatic Portrait of a Dying Director

Toning down his typically confrontational style, Schrader reunites with Richard Gere (40-odd years after 'American Gigolo') to capture the career-reassessing soul of Russell Banks' next-to-last book.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Straying from the hotheaded “Taxi Driver” style that has dominated much of his career, Paul Schrader pays ruminative and respectful tribute to his late friend, novelist Russell Banks, who gave the writer-director the raw material for one of his best films, “Affliction” — and now, for one of his best films in years. Adapted from Banks’ “Foregone” (and given the title the author told Schrader he wanted for the book), “Oh, Canada” presents a dying artist’s final testimony as a multifaceted film-within-a-film, honoring Banks while also revealing so many of Schrader’s own thoughts on mortality.

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As Leonard sits for the camera, he shows zero interest in his legacy — the thing that drives so many young artists. He’s agreed to do this interview for Emma’s benefit, demanding that she be in the room (peripheral at first, Thurman proves every bit as strong as the role requires). In theory, Malcolm will ask the questions, but in practice, Leonard directs the shoot, responding for his wife’s benefit — and therein lies the soul of this profound if slightly scattered film.

What do these widescreen vignettes represent: the truth? Leonard’s memories? Or are they a more literal representation of what he shares with the cameras, which might be distorted or outright invented, considering his condition? The answer doesn’t really matter as Schrader builds a mosaic of Leonard’s life, cutting back to the aged director at times, as he stubbornly insists on being honest with them, with himself, with us.

Playing out like omniscient (if potentially unreliable) B-roll, the flashbacks come in a bit of a jumble. Leonard starts by talking about a moment in his second marriage when he and his pregnant wife Alicia (Kristine Froseth) were about to buy a house in Vermont. Days before Leonard was supposed to deliver the down payment, his wealthy father-in-law made a proposition to run the family business. At that point, Leonard dreamed of being a novelist. He was not one to be tied down, as another, earlier series of flashbacks (these in black and white) depict.

Leonard’s entire reputation has been founded on the myth that he fled the United States for Canada, as either a draft dodger or a conscientious objector. The truth isn’t quite so romantic — in fact, it’s downright anti-romantic, as Leonard describes a lifelong pattern of walking out on women. (At one point, he admits to seducing Diana.) In addition to Leonard’s narration, “Oh, Canada” privileges the voice of his abandoned son, Cornel (Zach Shaffer), whom he strategically neglected to mention to Emma during their more-than-30-year marriage.

Feeling death looming, Leonard needs to come clean. He likens the process of doing this interview to praying (“Whether or not you believe in God, you don’t lie when you pray,” he says), but it’s more of a confession, and a somewhat confused one at that, given the film’s prismatic and audaciously nonlinear structure. It probably doesn’t help that Gere is constantly popping up in scenes set in the ’60s. Now in his 70s — and notoriously outspoken on social media — Schrader has been quite public about his personal health issues. With this film, he confronts the ugly and seemingly unjust truth of dying.

Once driven by his loins, Leonard does his interview with a urostomy bag hanging by his side. When the young female intern leans in to attach his mic, Leonard takes a deep whiff (classier than the cliché where he might look down her blouse). How difficult it must have been for this incorrigible womanizer to get older, how necessary in satisfying his libido that false legend surely was. Now, he has no need to sustain it. From Emma, he seeks not forgiveness but greater intimacy.

This is ultimately Banks’ story, though one can feel Schrader weaving his own ideas into Leonard’s worldview, as America’s most eschatological living director shares insights into this cultural moment, when countless artists have been called out for bad behavior. How many have escaped this moral reckoning? Here, Leonard brings that scrutiny upon himself, exposing his shortcomings in a way that, should Malcolm’s movie ever come out, would surely undermine his reputation, to which Schrader asks: Is the role of art to be respectable? Can it really ever be honest?

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Competition), May 17, 2024. Running time: 94 MIN.

• Production: An Arclight Films International presentation of a Northern Lights, Vested Interest, Ottocento, Left Home Prods. production, in association with Exemplary Films, Carte Blanche Entertainment, One Two Twenty Entertainment, Sipur Studios. Producers: Tiffany Boyle, Luisa Law, Meghan Hanlon, Scott Lastaiti, David Gonzales. Executive producers: Gary Hamilton, Jon Adgemi, Ryan Hamilton, John Molloy, Brian Beckmann, Andrea Chung Ying Ye, Rob Hinderliter, Caerthan Banks, Riccardo Maddalosso, Steven D. Kravitz, Joel Michaely, Terri Garbarini, Steven Demmler, Tom Ogden, Damiano Tucci, Andrea Bucko, Kathryn M. Moseley, Braxton Pope, Oliver Ridge Elsa Ramo, R. Wesley Sierk Emilio Schenker, Kyle Stroud, Arun K. Thapar, Eyal Rimmon, Gideon Tadmor. Co-executive producers: Bill Way, Susan Beer, Elliott Whitton, Yuwei Du Sophia Banks, Divya Shahani, Judd Erlich, Aman Thapar, Yuchuan Cao, Jay Brunley, Tiziano Tucci.
• Crew: Director, writer: Paul Schrader, based on the novel “Foregone” by Russell Banks. Camera: Andrew Wonder. Editors: Benjamin Rodriguez Jr.Music: Phosphorescent. Music supervisor: Dina Juntila.
• With: Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, Jacob Elordi.

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