Released in Russian cinemas on February 26, “Malysh” grossed roughly as much as the previous Z-segment leader, “Pozyvnoy ‘Passazhir’”, but in a shorter period. At the same time, its audience was smaller: about 310,000 viewers versus 432,000, which the author links primarily to higher ticket prices.
The article treats the film as a sign of the evolution of wartime propaganda in cinema. Earlier productions were built around inner doubt followed by ideological conversion; here, psychological complexity is largely removed, and blame is shifted to an external enemy, above all the United States. Director Andrey Simonov, who previously made the series “20/22,” again uses Mariupol as the central setting.
In the author’s view, Z-cinema is no longer a collection of isolated agitprop projects but is becoming a system. As evidence, she cites the #SVOeKINO program at the Tavrida-2025 festival, where war participants are invited as consultants and authors. This is presented as part of a broader кадровая and cultural policy that turns military experience into professional capital.
The plot of “Malysh” centers on Dima, a rapper from Donetsk played by Gleb Kalyuzhny. He goes to Mariupol first to rescue his mother, then is drawn into a sequence of combat scenes where logic is subordinated to the film’s propagandistic purpose. In the climax, an African American character named John is introduced to articulate the film’s anti-American message.
“Only politicians need this war. Americans will take Ukrainian land. They do this all over the world,” John says, expressing the picture’s central thesis.
The author also focuses on how the film is promoted through Kalyuzhny’s public image. In her assessment, the actor’s recognizable soft and интеллигентный screen persona is being used to create a new romanticized image of war. At the premiere, it was emphasized that he entered military service after filming, although Russian media had previously reported problems with his draft registration and the risk of a criminal case for evasion.
The article concludes that this kind of propaganda cinema tries to present the war as if it were already a finished and heroic story, while reality remains unresolved and changes faster than such films can be produced and released.