By Murad Rakhimov | 2025-11-06

Russia's oldest film studio is being recast as a patriotic stage for state-approved storytelling.

In September, President Vladimir Putin has ordered the transfer of Lenfilm's ownership to the city of Saint Petersburg, where officials say it will focus on historical and patriotic films celebrating Russian heroes.

Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova said in a Telegram post that the move will help "foster a sense of historical responsibility among Russian youth and cultivate love for the homeland through high-quality films."

Saint Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov echoed that message, arguing that cinema can strengthen young people's understanding of the nation's past and traditions.

The Federal Agency for State Property Management has already begun transferring equity in Lenfilm to the city.

Lenfilm has long struggled with instability, including four CEO changes since 2020 and persistent debts. Despite state support and occasional property sales, it reported losses of 162 million RUB last year (almost $2 million) -- the highest since 2019.

Alisher Ilkhamov, director of the London-based Central Asia Due Diligence, identified two main objectives behind the move: saving Lenfilm from financial collapse and integrating Russian cinema more deeply into state propaganda efforts.

"I'm confident these plans will fail," Ilkhamov told Kontur. "Soviet history demonstrates that no film mandated by authorities for communist or patriotic propaganda ever became popular among true enthusiasts. The hits were those that resisted propaganda and championed universal values."

Ilkhamov anticipated that Russia will repeat past errors, with Lenfilm trading debt for mediocrity.

Blogger and rights activist Alexander Kim described the "deprivatization" as stemming from mismanagement rather than a bid for greater control.

"The state already completely dominates Russia's film industry -- no additional oversight is required," Kim told Kontur.

Box-office flop

Recent examples suggest that state-backed cinema has struggled to find audiences. The propaganda film "Tolerance," released in September and featuring writer and Z-activist Zakhar Prilepin, was a resounding failure at the box office.

Estimates put its production cost at 200 million RUB (about $2.5 million), with funding from the Culture Ministry remaining opaque.

During its three-week run across 41 theaters, it attracted only 310 viewers and earned roughly 100,000 RUB (some $1,200), averaging just three attendees per screening.

The YouTube trailer received a mere 9,400 views.

Set in the fictional nation of Franglia, the movie portrays a societal crisis triggered by liberal values. Key characters include a pastor, his transgender daughter, a police officer and a winemaker.

The pastor, fired from his church, evicts his daughter, who is then assaulted by refugees. The police officer's friend investigates but hits systemic roadblocks.

Later, following the rape of the winemaker's daughter by refugees, the winemaker attacks their camp. In the chaos, the officer accidentally kills his friend and is imprisoned despite acting in self-defense.

Director Andrey Grachev intended to illustrate how "Europe is losing its roots," predicting that liberalism could wipe out French and Italian identities within a decade.

Filmed by Russian United Studios in Vyborg after being denied permission to shoot in Europe, Grachev's film echoes the Soviet Union's collapse, blaming foreign influence for eroding social values, a theme that fits Russia's wider narrative of Western decline.

Putin-era propaganda films

Totalitarian states, including contemporary Russia, often use cinema to shape public opinion and legitimize their policies, even aggressive ones.

An early example from Putin's tenure is "Olympus Inferno," a film about the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, rushed to theaters just six months after the conflict.

It depicts US troops fighting alongside Georgians, a deranged Georgian attacking civilians in an armored vehicle, and American media suppressing the facts.

Four years later, "August. Eighth" reprised similar themes but bombed, earning a spot among 2012's top cinema flops.

The 2014 annexation of Crimea and the Donbas conflict fueled a new wave of propaganda. That December, "War Correspondent" debuted with anti-American narratives and fear-mongering about Ukrainian nationalists' atrocities.

Follow-up films, such as "Crimea" (2017), "The Crimean Bridge: Made with Love!" (2018), "Donbass: Borderland" (2019), "The Witness" (2023), and "Call Sign 'Passenger'" (2024), all failed to recoup costs.

War films: censorship surge

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has ramped up production of films about the so-called "special military operation." Lyubimova stated that 23 documentaries and features have been created to date.

For example, "The Witness" (2023), the inaugural feature on the invasion, centers on a Belgian violinist in Kyiv who observes supposed "inhumane crimes and bloody provocations" by Ukrainians.

Propaganda efforts are increasingly drawing on the 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War and Russian Empire history, though these productions often twist facts and suffer from poor quality.

"These films don't mirror historical reality -- they're crudely made, dull and insipid, intolerable even for those without discerning taste. Modern Russia simply lacks the intellectual depth for quality patriotic cinema," economist Anvar Nazirov told Kontur.

Nazirov cautioned that Kremlin propagandists are building a factory-line of ideological films, reminiscent of Stalin-era cinema where 95% of output was propaganda, now largely forgotten.

Today's versions include an added layer of corruption.

Aleksei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation revealed that for one film, screenwriter Margarita Simonyan, director Tigran Keosayan and their relatives siphoned off 46 million RUB ($565,000), nearly half the federal budget allocation.

With propaganda on the rise, censorship is tightening. Russian and foreign films deemed incompatible with "Russian values" are denied or stripped of distribution licenses.

Starting March 2026, new laws will make it simpler for authorities to block screenings in theaters and on streaming platforms.

Kim contended that true creative freedom has vanished.

"The most you can hope for is films unrelated to the war or imperial ambitions. This inevitably degrades quality. In theory, directors could subtly insert dissenting symbols, but I doubt anyone will risk it," he said.