11/21/2023 0 Comments Witness film![]() ![]() It just isn’t authentic.”įor some in the country, the pink alternate universe of Barbie has provided a welcome escape. “And the viewers can feel when a movie is made on orders by the state. “The level and professionalism of the artists that decided to stay in Russia and work with the state is low,” Kozyrev said. “Z culture simply lacks talented people,” said the veteran culture critic Mikhail Kozyrev, using a popular term to refer to creatives who have rallied around the Russian pro-war Z symbol.Įver since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, hundreds of prominent film-makers, writers and singers have left the country, an exodus that has drawn parallels with the 1922 Soviet philosophers’ ships – boats that carried some of Russia’s leading intellectuals into exile. Just like The Witness, both films were box-office disasters and received scathing reviews from independent critics. Not much later, a state-sponsored romantic comedy The Crimean Bridge – about the Kerch Bridge, Putin’s prestige project – was written by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the government-funded RT network. Its creators said the idea for the film came directly from Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister. Shortly after Moscow illegally annexed Crimea, the county’s culture ministry financed the movie Crimeawhich justified the seizure of the peninsula. Russia has a long history under Putin of pushing propaganda-style films. “The last thing they want is to be reminded of the war.”Ī closed Kremlin study cited last week by the Brief telegram channel similarly said that sociologists concluded that Russian society largely wished to ignore the war in Ukraine. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. According to a poll published last month by the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent pollster, a record 40% of Russians said they do not actively follow the events in Ukraine, while only 23% of respondents said they “closely followed” the fighting. Opinion polls have consistently shown that many in Russia have preferred to turn a blind eye to the war in Ukraine. “It is no surprise people don’t want to spend their own money to see more of the same,” he added. “Russians get force-fed propaganda everywhere they go – on state television, on the street, in schools and universities,” said Ivan Philippov, creative executive at AR Content, the production company of the renowned film producer Alexander Rodnyansky. “When I got to the theatre room, I thought the viewing ended because it was so empty.”Īs the Russian authorities ramp up their war rhetoric at home, movies like The Witness raise questions about just how effective Russian propaganda films actually are. ![]() “I had seen all the other movies already and had a free evening, so decided just to check it out,” Alexei said, requesting that his surname be withheld for security reasons. ![]() Set to a budget of 200 million roubles (£1.5m), it has grossed less than 14 million roubles (£110,000) in its first two weeks, with viewers across the country reporting empty cinema halls.Ī scene from The Witness, a state-sponsored propaganda film. The release of The Witness comes on the back of plans announced by the Russian authorities to boost the production of movies glorifying Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.īut The Witness is a box-office flop. On the eve of the invasion, Vladimir Putin said Moscow had to “denazify” its neighbour, the lie that Ukraine was infiltrated by dangerous “Nazis”. In two hours of screen time, the film covers a wide spectrum of falsehoods that the Kremlin has used to justify its invasion of Ukraine. As a witness to these unspeakable horrors, Cohen sets out to tell the world the “truth” about the conflict. The Witness centres on a fictional character called Daniel Cohen, an esteemed Belgian violinist who arrives in Kyiv to perform in February 2022, days before Russian troops entered Ukraine.Īs Russia launches its war, Cohen gets caught up in the fighting, witnessing a series of “inhuman crimes and bloody provocations by Ukrainian nationalists”, according to the movie’s premise.Īt one point, a Ukrainian commander is seen walking around with a copy of Mein Kampf, while other Ukrainian soldiers pledge their allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
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