For nearly two months now dedicated cinephiles in Russia have been engrossed in a public row over the fate of “Ayta,” an award-winning thriller by Yakutian director Stepan Burnashev. The movie was effectively banned by the Kremlin in September in a move that caused widespread public outrage and made many fear for the future of regional film industries. In the latest turn of events, Alexander Dyukov, a member of the Presidential Commission on Interethnic Relations, last week described “Ayta” as “textbook nationalistic cinema.” “This is a perfect example of a nationalistic movie, filmed in an ethnocratic republic where silent ethnic cleansing has already taken place: within 30 years, the number of Russians [living in Yakutia] has decreased by exactly half,” Dyukov wrote to his over 18,000 subscribers on Telegram. “Ayta,” which has become the highest-grossing film ever in the Far East republic of Sakha (Yakutia), tells the story of a standoff between indigenous