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Director Kitty Green (3rdR) poses with Femen activists at the Venice Film Festival on September 4, 2013. AFP/GABRIEL BOUYS

In a revelation sure to disappoint Femen supporters — and vindicate its critics — a documentary unveiled Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival showed the true, unexpected, face behind the Ukraine-based feminist group: Victor Svyatski.

While Svvatski’s participation in the movement was already known — the Ukrainian has oft been cited as a “consultant” to the group — claims of his deeper role have shocked many, including some Femen members. According to Australian filmmaker Kitty Green in her documentary Ukraine is Not a Brothel, Svvatski founded Femen in 2008, cherry picks the “prettiest girls” for topless protests, and continues to exercise control from the movement’s innermost circle.

The revelation makes sense. There was something distinctly troubling about swarms of thin, attractive and bare-breasted activists swarming Europe’s capitals in ambiguous protest against religion, patriarchy and dictatorship, in marked contrast with their Russian counterparts in the feminist punk group Pussy Riot, who have voiced much more explicit complaints against President Putin’s autocratic reign.

It’s hard to find a figure less sympathetic — and more antithetical to Femen’s platform — than Svvatski, who in an on-camera interview called group members “bitches” and “weak,” adding

They don’t have the strength of character. They don’t even have the desire to be strong. Instead, they show submissiveness, spinelessness, lack of punctuality, and many other factors which prevent them from becoming political activists. These are qualities which it was essential to teach them.

Despite this, the documentary will do little to dilute Femen’s influence within Europe: group spokeswoman Inna Shevshenko was quick to distance herself from Svvatski and the group’s Kyiv headquarters, noting that the “true Femen” is now in Paris. (Indeed, the presence of Femen members at the film premiere indicates the media-hungry group’s desire to capitalize on the revelation.) It poses, however, a greater threat to the group’s forays into the more skeptical Arab world, where Femen has already earned the derision of secularists, Islamists, and feminists alike. Thanks to stunts like International Topless Jihad Day, Femen is increasingly regarded as an Islamaphobic and imperialist organization, prompting the creation of groups like Muslim Women Against Femen. Now, thanks to Svvatski’s emergence from the shadows, the group may lose what little credibility it has left among Arab feminists. Its motives for recent incursions into Tunisia, ostensibly to support Femen member Amina Sboui and protest the “Islamist patriarchy”, will also be cast in a harsher light. Already, the tenuous alliance between the Tunisian feminist and Femen is eroding, thanks to Sboui’s August 20 departure from the group, citing Islamophobia.

The irony here is palpable: after Femen co-opts Sboui’s cause in Tunisia — not to mention the cause of female Muslims across the MENA region, the group’s own primary cause appears to have been irredeemably co-opted.