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Kremlin’s Propaganda Film Flops

Updated: Oct 1, 2023

Anything that humiliates Putin and suggests that all is not going according to plan domestically with his ghastly 'special military operation' in Ukraine is, surely, good news.


Red Square at night, Moscow

So, hot on the heels of Russia's failure to beat India to the Moon's south pole - with NASA releasing images of the crater made by the country's disastrous Luna 25 mission that smashed into the Moon last week - it's heartening to learn that Putin's propaganda machine is suffering similar humiliation at, believe it or not, the box office.


Russia’s first feature-length film about its invasion of Ukraine is playing to near empty cinemas as the nation sources pirate copies of Barbie, starring Margot Robbie, instead. The Witness has become a two-hour box office flop after depicting president Volodymyr Zelensky’s men as violent neo-Nazis who torture and kill their own people. It’s the narrative the Kremlin has been promoting since the first days of the war - all packaged up in a motion picture - which Russians have, clearly, decided they do not want to see.


While Warner Bros, producer of Barbie, pulled out of the country shortly after war started, Russians have found creative ways to work around American copyrights laws, finding bootleg copies of the film that are then screened at pop-up cinemas, reports London's Evening Standard.


Ivan Philippov, creative executive at AR Content, the production company of the renowned film producer Alexander Rodnyansky, said: “Russians get force-fed propaganda everywhere they go - on state television, on the street, in schools and universities."


“It is no surprise people don’t want to spend their own money to see more of the same.”

 

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