MOSCOW, July 4. /TASS/. Russia’s Mosfilm film studio maintains normal business relations with Ukrainian TV channels. They purchase Leonid Gaiday’s and Eldar Ryazanov’s films very actively, the studio’s Director General Karen Shakhnazarov said in an interview with TASS.
"Soviet films are still broadcasted on TV. Mosfilm continues selling the rights (to broadcast the movies from the film studio’s collection - TASS). Our contacts with TV channels have not changed," Shakhnazarov noted.
"They, of course, do not broadcast war films, movies made by banned directors, and there are many of them already, and the range of filmmakers has narrowed down. However, films by Leonid Gaiday and Eldar Ryazanov are broadcasted, and they sell well in Mosfilm. We’ve got normal business relations with TV channels," he stated.
That said, according to Mosfilm’s head, almost no Russian films are screened in Ukraine’s cinemas. As for films made by the director himself, they are also banned throughout the country, because Shakhnazarov is forbidden from entering Ukraine. "My pictures in Ukraine are still prohibited," he confirmed. "Still, Ukraine’s largest internet resources continue showing them."
In February 2015, the Ukrainian parliament introduced amendments to the law "On protection of information television and radio space," prohibiting movies that contained "Russian propaganda." On April 21, 2016, Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko also signed a law prohibiting the broadcast of Russian movies made after January 1, 2014.
In addition, Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency, the SBU, banned around 140 Russian celebrities from entering Ukraine, such as filmmakers Karen Shakhnazarov and Pavel Lungin, musicians Alexander Rozenbaum, Sergey Penkin and Nikolay Rastorguyev, actors Vasily Lanovoy, Valentin Gaft, Oleg Tabakov, Valentina Talyzina, Valentina Telichkina and Natalya Varley, as well as singers Lev Leshchenko and Iosif Kobzon. The blacklist has been updated from time to time.