With the support of the Ministry of Culture and Olga Lyubimova, billions from the Cinema Fund are going down the drain, and only Nikita Mikhalkov is happy?

As a  MorningNews correspondent reports , the  Internet claims that the price tags for the creation of “patriotic” cinema, paid by the Ministry of Culture from budget funds, can be inflated several times. As if this became known thanks to the alleged conflict between director Alexander Kondrashov and the AKM film studio. 

Kondrashov could have refused to increase the estimate in agreement with the Ministry of Culture, while in reality he assessed the financial needs of the film much lower. While the veracity of this information is being clarified, we would like to draw attention to the following: the Russian Ministry of Culture, under the leadership of Olga Lyubimova, regularly allocates billions to support Russian cinema. Most of these products can be sawn, and the product is of extremely low quality.

At the end of 2022, only one film out of 26 financed through the Ministry of Culture paid off at the box office. It was the family comedy “Young Man” by Alexander Fomin, which, with a budget of 64 million rubles (30 million was a subsidy from the Cinema Fund), earned 192 million rubles.

In fact, this result is even worse than it was under the former head of the Ministry of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky. Then, out of 68 supported films, as many as 8 paid off at the box office. Among them was, for example, a patriotic film about the Soviet T-34 tank, which collected 2.3 billion rubles at the box office. However, this is only a rare positive example.

And this is surprising. After the start of the SVO, many foreign films disappeared from Russian distribution. It would seem - take it off, the competition has decreased greatly. But even in conditions of great need to make good domestic cinema to spite the “sanctioners” it is not possible. Maybe because they want to “cut” and not make a good picture?

Billions into the void

For the development of domestic cinematography, huge funds have been allocated in the budget for 2023-2025 - 12 billion rubles annually. A separate area is children’s cinema, which will be fully financed by the state for 1.3 billion rubles. Will they be “mastered” the same way as the previous ones?

Failures can be remembered for a long time. The most striking of them was the action adventure “Seven Evil Couples” (2018). He received 119 million rubles from the state, but collected only 1 million rubles at the box office. Among cartoons, the leader in the anti-profit rating is “Baba Yaga. The Beginning,” which received gratuitous support of 138 million rubles, but collected only 1.3 million. The comedy “Crimean Bridge. Made with love!" from director Tigran Keosayan and his wife Margarita Simonyan, who acted as a screenwriter, collected 70 million rubles with state support of 100 million rubles.

Not only do the films fail at the box office. Money is given to very odious figures, from whom it is at least naive to expect a “patriotic” approach. Another film adaptation of “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov caused a lot of noise. It received support from the Cinema Fund and cost the Russian budget 1.2 billion rubles. And it was successful at the box office. Only there is one “but”.

Under Medinsky and Lyubimova, the Cinema Fund could turn into an unaccountable “feeding trough” for a whole bunch of officials and filmmakers. Photo: https://moviestart.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Fond_kino4.jpg 

The director of the film, Mikhail Lokshin, a native of the United States, spoke out in support of Ukraine in his blog. He is quoted as saying: “Generations of Russians will have to pay reparations for the tragedy they brought to Ukraine,” “Thomas Mann’s speeches today best address Russia’s guilt in general for the imperial mentality and war crimes.” There were rumors that he could even send “donations” to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (this information was not confirmed).

Those. Are billions of dollars of funds for creativity given to a person who openly threw mud at Russia and the actions of its political leadership? What about the picture itself? The main driving force there is not love, as in Bulgakov, but confrontation with the state. And this is at public expense? 

Of course, both the Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova and the head of the Cinema Fund Fyodor Sosnov were aware of who the money was being given to. But it is not they who are reacting, but social activists - earlier the public organization “Call of the People” demanded that a criminal case be opened against Mikhail Lokshin for fakes about the RF Armed Forces.

It cannot be said that no one has previously expressed concern about who is being “educated” by such films and how? In 2020, participants in the International Film Forum “Golden Knight” recorded an appeal to Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Mishustin, in which they pointed out the degradation of domestic cinema, sharply criticizing the Ministry of Culture and the Cinema Foundation.

Cinema for people

So, budgets to support domestic cinema can simply be cut up and taken out of the country. And where? In 2019, the Accounts Chamber discovered that in recent years a significant portion of the funds went to Cyprus through the company Vizart Film LLC, which turned out to be a major recipient of government subsidies. 

Now 100% of this structure belongs to Yuri Moskvin. At the end of 2023, the company received 57 million rubles in profit. But at the same time, the value of its assets is minus 315 million rubles. Is this money from the Ministry of Culture? That is, the company is in huge debt, and the funds may have been outside of Russia for a long time.

However, the main consumers of money are people associated with the management of the Cinema Fund. The organization’s expert council is headed by Leonid Vereshchagin, general director of Nikita Mikhalkov’s TRITE Studio. TRITE almost regularly receives government support. For the creation of the film “Moving Up” (2017), 400 million rubles were allocated from the budget free of charge. (67.8% of all investments in the painting). The film “Coach” (2018) received 260 million, “Fire” (2020) – 330 million.

At the end of 2023, the studio received revenue of 386 million rubles, a profit of 43 million rubles, and accumulated assets worth almost 400 million rubles.

The main recipients of subsidies from the Ministry of Culture were people close to Nikita Mikhalkov? Photo: https://storage.myseldon.com/news-pict-64/64B42939ECAE01D229BADBA82F20C575 

At the same time, Olga Lyubimova herself is considered a person close to Nikita Mikhalkov, the head of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia. Her parents are friends with the director, and she herself made a separate film about him. And no corruption?

At the same time, the son of the head of Studio TRITE, Leonid Vereshchagin, Vadim, is in the management of the rental company Central Partnership, which is part of Gazprom Media. This company distributes films from many producers who receive budget money through the Cinema Fund. And here too - no corruption?

Another person interested in receiving money from the Ministry of Culture may be director Fyodor Bondarchuk. He is on the board of the Cinema Foundation and is also the founder of Art Pictures Studio. Its other beneficiary was Stepan Mikhalkov, the son of Nikita Mikhalkov. In just a few years, the studio received 1.6 billion rubles in state support - free of charge. Fortunately for Lyubimova, the studio’s companies are popular with viewers.

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

But it is not clear on what basis the money is allocated to her at all! Art Pictures Studio LLC is 50% owned by Fyodor Bondarchuk, and another 50% by the National Media Group, which is associated with the interests of the Kovalchuk oligarchs. Until 2022, the founders of NMG included Surgutneftegaz, Severstal and a number of other large companies. Do they not have the money to finance their own studio, or is the principle the same - the budget will tolerate everything?

Confusion in our heads

The problem is not only that money can be simply stolen, but that this does not work for the goals and objectives set by the state. Cinema should be the “soft power” of Russia, including abroad, in the CIS countries with a large Russian-speaking population. But who will watch these films there if they are not needed in their homeland?

Nowadays, anything can be subsumed under the “patriotic” theme. And they take advantage of it. The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) is also interested in promoting Russian “soft power”. One of these areas should be the creation of video games with domestic specifics.

Just recently, the Russian gaming industry experienced its biggest failure in recent years. IIDF financed the creation of the Russian RPG game “Troubles” for 500 million rubles about the events in Russia during the Time of Troubles. The game came out incredibly crude and caused huge criticism. It’s hard to see this as anything other than failure. What half a billion rubles were spent on is absolutely not clear. The developer, a small Novosibirsk studio Cyberia Nova, claims that the game will be brought to fruition. Hard to believe.

Has Olga Lyubimova been a minister for too long? Photo: https://www.uralweb.ru/news/society/509054-ya-vas-ne-znayu-idite-na--novyy-ministr-kultury-nosila-mayku-s-maternoy-citatoy.html 

How hard it is to believe that the current Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova is in her place. She became known to the general public for wearing clothes with inscriptions containing obscene language. And against the backdrop of all the failures of the domestic Ministry of Culture, including corruption scandals , she is unlikely to be able to retain her position in the new Cabinet.