Vladimir Putin supported director and propagandist Nikita Mikhalkov’s initiative to introduce quotas on foreign films in Russia. This follows from the transcript of a meeting of the Council for Culture.
“We know very well how strictly foreign films are quota-regulated, say, in France. And what is our problem? <…> Why are we gaping? Ideologically, we let through certain completely stupid things that we do not need, and financially we do not support our own producer <...> It seems to me that the ideological component matters, and the purely financial one, and the commercial one — everything matters,” Putin said.
He instructed the Russian Culture Ministry to prepare a “compromise document” on the “quota system” for foreign films.
As Agentstvo notes, in June of last year Mikhalkov said that “colleagues in the film industry asked [him] to appeal to Putin with a request to introduce quotas on American cinema.”
“The entry fee for considering a film presented in Russia is 5 million rubles, and 10% of box office revenue goes to refinancing national cinema,” Mikhalkov said at the time.
According to him, this function is proposed to be handed over to Gazprom-Media Holding or National Media Group, “controlled to some extent, to varying degrees, by the state.”