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Culture minister calls to ensure half of films on billboards are Russian

According to the minister, the target set for 2018 is 25%, and meeting it will be incredibly hard
Vladimir Medinsky at a cinema ITAR-TASS/Vyacheslav Prokofyev
Vladimir Medinsky at a cinema
© ITAR-TASS/Vyacheslav Prokofyev

MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said in an interview with TASS on Wednesday that he wants homegrown movies to account for half of the films on the billboards in Russia.

"In the film industry the share of Russian titles has been up from 14% to 18%. The process has now slowed down, but we hope it’ll be up to 25%," Medinsky said.

The goal of the ministry "is to ensure half of the films on the billboards should be Russian." "But that’s a dream that may materialize only in the long term. The target set for 2018 is 25%, and meeting it will be incredibly hard."

Achieving the desired would be very hard, though, because direct government investment into the film industry has shrunk to five billion rubles from six billion in 2014.

"To make things clear: five billion rubles is less than the budget of one blockbuster made in Hollywood. And yet, even in the context of smaller government financing we managed to achieve a greater share on the list of titles running at our theaters," he said.

This is thanks to a combination of measures. "Firstly, ever more good films are made in Russia. This is no merit of ours, but the film-makers’. Also, we are much better in holding contests and pitching procedures. We tend to support the most worthy contestants. At least, we would like to believe this is really so," he said.

The minister explained that the economics of a film running with government support incorporates several components. "For its part, the share of government subsidies is split into recoverable and irrecoverable. Under a procedure I managed to enforce part of the money goes back to the Cinema Fund. In the context of a general budget slump we get an extra one billion rubles. The money is invested into film production again. The amount of money grows year in year out, because the amount of recoverable funds goes up. In 2018 we expect to have about one and half billion rubles back. And so on and so forth."

The full text of the interview