Six months on, what impact is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine having on the cinema sector in both countries?
Ukraine is now a country where some basement cinemas, open for business as much as possible, double as air-raid shelters. This does save time for weary audiences who are accustomed to what Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi calls the “general rule that in cases of the air-raid alerts, the screening is interrupted and people have to follow to the shelter”.
Footfall in Ukrainian cinemas is not especially brisk and few new films are on screens. Nakonechnyi, whose debut dramatic feature Butterfly Vision premiered to strong reviews in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in May, recently went to see Sergei Parajanov’s 1965 arthouse classic Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors at Kino42, a small arthouse cinema in Kyiv.
Butterfly Vision, sold by Wild Bunch International, screened at Sarajevo Film Festival in August and will be released in Ukraine later this year by Arthouse Traffic. “We are adjusting,” says Nakonechnyi. “We are trying to keep the industry alive.”
One international sales executive tells Screen that Ukrainian buyers — keen to untangle themselves from the multi-territory deals that, pre‑invasion, were often done with CIS territories — are not in a position to pay minimum guarantees. The goal right now is a simple one: to keep the sector going.
In Russia, the continuing Hollywood embargo of the market has seen the Moscow-based arms of US studios halt all releases. Universal Pictures closed its offices in July, while Disney and Sony are understood to have kept some employees but both are very quiet. Paramount and Warner Bros, which release films in Russia through Central Partnership and Karo Premiere respectively, have put those output deals on hold.
The lack of new US films on release has created opportunities for some of Russia’s independent distributors. “You can secure more screens and do more screenings on one day and you can stay longer in cinemas,” says Nadezda Motina, CEO of Moscow-based Arna Media. She had a solid success this spring with Patrice Leconte’s Maigret starring Gérard Depardieu.
Arna is now preparing to release Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave in late September. The Cannes prizewinner closed Moscow International Film Festival at the beginning of the month, and Motina acquired it from South Korean sales outfit CJ ENM as a pre-buy at Cannes 2021.
Long-stay titles
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, US studio movies generally accounted for 80%‑85% of total Russian box-office receipts. According to Comscore, which continues to track box office in the country, Sony’s action movie Uncharted had grossed more than $22m in Russia between January 7 and August 4, 2022. The Tom Holland-starrer was released just before the invasion began and has stayed in cinemas ever since. That is more than the $18.7m the film achieved in France and only just behind a UK gross of $28m.
The other titles in the Comscore top 10 for the year to date include local sword-and-sorcery yarn The Last Warrior: Root Of Evil, distributed by Disney; Death On The Nile and The King’s Man, also both Disney; Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home; and Universal Pictures International’s Sing 2. All landed in Russian cinemas before the war and are still in circulation.
New local films on release include Nashe Kino’s survival thriller The One, which has grossed around $5m. Re-releases include Central Partnership’s 2019 local hit Son Of A Rich and 2013’s ice-hockey drama Legend No 17. Older international titles now back on screens include Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s 2014 feature What We Do In The Shadows and even Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 classic Solaris.
While some international sales companies have told Screen they are not working with Russian distributors following the invasion, others continue to do business with the territory. There was a sizeable Russian buyer contingent in Cannes this year that included Central Partnership and Arna Media, and several Russian distributors are now looking to attend Toronto. As at other international festivals, official Russian delegates are banned but buyers and sellers from the territory are still able to attend in a private capacity.
“All the Russians I deal with, they are not Putin supporters. They hate the war,” is how one prominent German seller justifies their ongoing relationship.
However, Motina reveals Arna Media has not been able to release Sophie Hyde’s Sundance title Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, which was originally on its 2022 slate. The deal was not signed and the UK producer, Debbie Gray of Genesius Pictures, said she did not want the film in Russian cinemas.
But Arna Media has been able to retain rights to most of the western films it acquired before the war started. US giant-shark thriller The Black Demon (which Highland Film Group sold to Arna at Cannes 2021 before the war started) and UK horror picture Lord Of Misrule (handled by Bankside Films) are set to be released next year. London-based Bankside has made clear it is no longer doing business with Russian buyers.
Another new US title set to hit Russian screens in the coming months is US romantic drama After Ever Happy, which Volga Film acquired from Voltage Pictures in a deal done two years ago.
Pirate pickings
With screens to fill, it is understood that piracy has forced top Russian exhibitors such as Karo, Cinema Park, Formula Kino and Kinomax to apply for government support. According to sources, however, they have not received any state backing since the war began.
So far, the larger distributors have resisted the temptation to show pirated copies of studio movies, as they hope to resume business with the majors once the war is over. But, according to sources, smaller independent exhibitors without these relationships to protect are taking a different approach, illegally screening high-profile US films such as Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick and Warner Bros’ Elvis.
“Their argument is that nobody is helping us, we’re small, we need to survive. There’s no other way,” says a Russian sales agent, who asked to remain anonymous, of the attitude taken by the smaller exhibitors.
With no end to the situation in sight, the next big title likely to make its way illegally to Russian screens — and laptops — is expected to be James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way Of Water, due to be released globally by Disney in mid-December. As Arna Media’s Motina puts it, “There’s no-one here from the US studios to protect their copyright.”
No comments yet