HOLLYWOOD films may be attracting millions of pounds in Moscow, but Russia’s domestic movie industry is also thriving, without Western stars.
Last year, Russian box-office revenues were $350 million (£192 million). The most successful film was the Russian-made Company 9, an Afghan war epic, which made $24 million.
The present renaissance in Russian films is remarkable, given that just a decade ago Russia’s film industry was near collapse. Having lived off state subsidies for most of the past century, Soviet-era studios crumpled in the 1990s, failing to compete with pirate video imports from Hollywood. In 1997, the industry made just $6 million in box-office revenue.
The situation began to improve in 2000, around the time that President Putin came to power. The oil price rose and ordinary Russians started to feel wealthier and to go to the cinema more. Russian oligarchs, recognising a good business opportunity, put hundreds of millions of dollars into building giant multiplexes.
They also started to produce films to cater to the popular taste for Hollywood-style blockbusters, but with Russian actors and a patriotic flavour. The first such film was 2000’s Brothers 2, in which a Russian gangster hunts down an American gangster in New York.
The industry has taken off in the past two years. Much of the funding for blockbusters comes from the State, via the state-owned Channel One television station. It also has a preference for funding patriotic films, often featuring as heroes agents of the FSB security service.
The most successful Stoliwood films so far have been the first two of the Night Watch trilogy, about a crew of vodka-swilling vampire-hunters. The series caught the eye of Western studios, with Twentieth Century Fox buying foreign distribution rights and producing the third film in the trilogy.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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