Despite a Hollywood boycott triggered by the Ukraine war, Russians are still able to access the big releases thanks to a network of illicit screenings
As the war in Ukraine grinds on, civil liberties rapidly evaporate, and a currency spirals ever downward, trips to the cinema may be the least of the average Russian’s worries. Hollywood studios pulled its films out of Russia back in March 2022, but that hasn’t stopped many Russians from enjoying them as a vibrant illegal market for screenings of globally popular films such as Barbie and Oppenheimer has emerged in Russia’s largest cities, including Moscow, St Petersburg and Kazan.
Anton Dolin, who until recently was editor of Iskusstvo Kino, one of Russia’s oldest and most popular film magazines, was forced to leave the country in 2022 after being targeted by pro-war ultranationalists. Speaking from Riga in Latvia, where he is currently living, Dolin says that the popularity of these screenings reflects the attitudes of Russians who don’t agree with the war, and as a result feel that the removal of Hollywood films is another example of the privileges they once enjoyed being taken away as a result. Going to see Barbie, in a sense, represents a reclaiming of the lifestyle they had before the war. “They see watching Hollywood movies as a right,” he says.
