There was also Aleksandr Ustyugov’s Secret Weapon (2019), about the development of the Katyusha rocket launcher. There have been films that celebrate individual devotion to the cause, such as Viktoria Fansiutina’s Soldier Boy (2019), about a six-year-old orphan who became the smallest soldier and hero of the Great Patriotic War, and Konstantin Buslov’s Kalashnikov (2020), in which a tank driver invents the assault rifle that came to bear his name. Indeed, such is the epic scale of these films that few of them could have been made without state subsidy. If the past 20 years are anything to go by, Putin’s regime understands the propaganda value of films glorifying the nation’s military victories in the Great Patriotic War. But most directors with successful careers dependent on domestic subjects and audiences have stayed behind.
“This is a war and Russia started it,” said the director of Petrov’s Flu, Kirill Serebrennikov, who has gone into self-exile in Europe to complete his film Limonov, starring Ben Wishaw. For the past decade 70 per cent of Russia’s domestic cinema revenue has come from US films - films they shall now have to live without - while an international boycott of Russian films will limit their foreign exchange revenue.įor the past decade 70 per cent of Russia’s domestic cinema revenue has come from US films This year, Victory Day was overshadowed by Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, which has taken a wrecking ball to Russia’s resurgent film industry. The Dawns Here Are Quiet was remade as a TV series, starting in 2015, and you can watch that on YouTube as well. Victory Day in Russia has traditionally been a day for watching old Soviet movies about the Great Patriotic War: classics such as Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying (1957), which is available on DVD from Criterion Vladimir Vengerov’s Baltic Skies (1961) Stanislav Rostotskiy’s The Dawns Here Are Quiet (1972) Leonid Bykov’s Only Old Men Are Going to Battle (1973), free to watch on YouTube Sergey Bondarchuk’s They Fought for the Motherland (1975), also on YouTube and Semyon Aranovich’s Torpedo Bombers (1983). To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. This article is taken from the June 2022 issue of The Critic.
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