Russia spends millions on war propaganda films. Most of them are box office bombs The war between Russia and Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine – A Belgian violinist arrives in Ukraine to play for an art-loving oligarch – and to witness the first days of a full-scale Russian invasion.

He sees how Ukrainian soldiers “kill” civilians and “bomb” a railway station to blame the deaths on the Russians whose goal is to “liberate” Ukraine from the Western-backed “neo-Nazi military junta.”

Soldiers with swastika tattoos electrocute the violinist, and “rape” and “murder” his manager. He barely escapes to see how Western politicians and media “scheme” against Russia.

Svedtil (Witness) was the first feature film about the ongoing war, directed by David Dadunashvili, and was released in Russia in August in 1,131 cinemas.

But with a budget of about $2 million, the film was one of the biggest hits at the box office, earning only $70,000 in its first four days.

Aggressive advertising and a lack of competition – hardly any Hollywood films are shown due to Western sanctions – have done little to help this end.

The producers of the film have not released further information about its box office.

On IMDB, a review aggregation site, Svidetel has a rating of 1 star out of 10 and has only scathing reviews.

Konstantin, an English teacher from the western city of Tula, told Al Jazeera: “It’s lie upon lie upon lie, and the artists don’t bother to pretend they are serious.” “It should be shown in Ukraine as a comedy.”

Since 2014, dozens of films have been shot in Russia about the annexation of Crimea and pro-Moscow separatists in the Ukrainian Donbass region.

Each failed at the box office, so insignificant and obscure that even the most outspoken warmongers failed to notice them.

Bombs and scandals

“In the past nine years, the state (not individuals, but the state) has not been able to make films about the heroes of Donbass,” Zakhar Prilepin, a novelist who joined the separatists and admitted to war crimes, wrote last year. On his blog.

He also denounced the exodus of actors and filmmakers from Russia, along with writers, rock and rap stars.

Last November, the Culture Ministry allocated $395 million for films covering “the current confrontation with Nazi and fascist ideologies,” the war in Ukraine, and “spiritual leaders and volunteers in Russia.”

One of them will be a television series based on Prilepin’s novel “Volunteer Romance.”

Director Oleg Lukishev said that the series will address “Russian identity.”

In 2018, Prilepin starred in a rare, critically acclaimed film about the war.

“Telephone Duty”, a short film about Donbas rebels, won the Best Short Narrative Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in the US.

Thousands of Ukrainians signed a petition demanding an apology from the festival organizers.

Another commercial failure was “Crimea,” a 2017 melodrama commissioned by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and costing his ministry about $2.5 million.

But its creators were not seeking profit, but rather made it available on file sharing networks and YouTube.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova urged Ukrainians to watch it “for enlightenment and contemplation.”

A review on Film.ru, Russia’s main portal for cinephiles, called the film “paralyzed and unsophisticated propaganda.”

Meanwhile, Russia canceled screenings and distribution of “Donbass,” a 2018 drama by Ukrainian director Serhiy Loznitsa that won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Despite the symbolic importance of Crimea in Russia today, other films about it have failed to capture the attention of moviegoers.

Crimean Bridge – Made with Love, a slapstick comedy written by outspoken preacher Margarita Simonyan and filmed by her husband Tigran Keosayan, cost $1.4 million but earned $250,000. It received a rating of 2.5 out of 10 on review aggregator Kinopoisk.ru, which Keosayan blamed on “sick people” and “Ukrainian bots”.

No more masterpieces

In stark contrast, some Soviet-era masterpieces that were funded and censored by Communist officials are still taught in film schools around the world.

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin was a major breakthrough in 1925 film editing.

Earth, a 1930 silent drama by Alexander Dovzhenko about collective farms, was presented in 2015 by UNESCO to mark the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Culture Branch.

Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradzhanov’s musings on art have won a string of international awards – and continue to inspire filmmakers and even pop stars like Lady Gaga.

“Unlike Eisenstein or Dovzhenko, these days, no one really believes in what they are doing,” said Askold Kurov, who filmed and co-produced “Welcome to Chechnya,” an award-winning 2020 documentary about the persecution of gay Chechens.

Soviet filmmakers believed in the messianic message of communism, revolutionized cinematic expression, and developed a new artistic language. But he said that their experiments were interrupted by the Stalinist doctrines of “socialist realism.”

The ideology currently embraced by Russia is a mixture of anti-Western nationalism and nostalgia for the Soviet and Tsarist past.

“These days, everything the government orders turns into boring nonsense. Because decent people don’t interfere,” said Kurov. “Because there is misappropriation of huge budgets, they need directors and producers who are easy to work with and safe.”

Another reason may be the texture of filmmaking.

Of the approximately 200 Russian films released annually, only a few are profitable.

Many filmmakers prefer to rely on government support and siphon off large portions, says an industry insider.

“They are hoping to get free gifts from the state. Free gifts flow in, but are stolen by those who get them,” one actor, who has played in dozens of Russian films and TV series, told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

He added that “much less than half” of the budget reaches the production team, but everyone in the production chain is implicated in corruption.

He said: “Corruption is not something that erodes the system, but rather something that keeps it together.”

“Profits are not our priority.”

Russia’s film industry underwent a traumatic transformation in the 1990s, and only by the early 2000s were several blockbusters able to compete with Hollywood blockbusters.

That’s when Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, and law enforcement agencies, including his alma mater, the Federal Security Service (FSB), began funding propaganda.

In The Apocalypse Code, a 2007 rip-off of the James Bond and Charlie’s Angels films, the world is saved by a revealingly dressed female FSB officer.

The film cost $15 million but grossed $7 million and was panned by critics.

Its founder, the non-profit National Film Support Fund, whose trustees included security and defense officials, apparently didn’t care.

“Profits are not our priority,” the fund’s head, Olesya Bykova, told this correspondent in 2008. Instead, she said her fund is focusing on something that can inspire “respect for the people who represent our country, our security officers, and our traditions.” And love for our motherland.”