Vladimir Kocharyan’s article examines how “Slavic cinema” in Russia changed from an attempt to create a local answer to Western fantasy into a genre increasingly tied to the state’s patriotic narrative.
The author treats Wolfhound: The Clan of the Gray Dogs from 2006, directed by Nikolai Lebedev and based on Maria Semyonova’s books, as the starting point. The film was conceived as commercial fantasy rooted in “native” culture, yet, in the author’s view, it was stylistically closer to American dark fantasy and carried no pronounced political message. The 2008 film Rusichi was received in a similar way and likewise left little mark.
The article sees the release of Viking in 2016 as a turning point. With a budget of 1.2 billion rubles, support from Channel One, and major actors in leading roles, the film offered a loose interpretation of Prince Vladimir’s conversion of Rus. Pagans were depicted as savage and violent, while Byzantium and Orthodoxy appeared as symbols of civilization and salvation. Despite the federal-scale campaign and a private screening for Vladimir Putin, the text says the film failed to recoup even half of its budget.
A year later came The Legend of Kolovrat by Dzhanik Fayziev. What matters here, the article argues, is not the historical debate over the plot’s authenticity but the consolidation of a durable formula: a besieged Russian city, an enemy from the East, and heroic resistance under a religious slogan. In the author’s view, this pattern would be repeated in later films of the genre.
A special place in the article is given to Heart of Parma by Anton Megerdichev, released in autumn 2022. The story of Prince Mikhail of Perm is built not on a simple divide between “us” and “them,” but on tensions among Moscow, local peoples, religious pressure, and the desire for autonomy. The author stresses that the film portrays the colonization of the region in a more layered and complex way than official state historiography does. The film grossed more than 900 million rubles, although nationalist commentators reacted with open hostility.
The article concludes that the popularity of the Slavic myth is driven not only by propaganda but also by a genuine demand for cultural identity. Yet the overlap between that demand and the current political agenda has turned the genre into a convenient tool for reinforcing a militarized, siege-centered vision of reality.