The war in Ukraine has taken center stage this week at the Berlin Film Festival, which is taking place for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.
At Thursday’s opening ceremony, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy appeared via satellite to encourage festival-goers “not to remain silent” over Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression. Sean Penn, who this week premiered his docu-portrait of the Ukrainian leader, “Superpower,” lashed out at Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who he described as a “war criminal” and a “creepy little bully.”
Moral outrage has not been in short supply since the start of the war, as the global film community — in a show of near unanimous condemnation of the Kremlin’s criminal attack — has rallied behind the Ukrainian war effort. But many U.S. and foreign companies quietly continue to do business with Putin’s pariah state or have resumed the deal-making that was put on pause once the war began.
Though Hollywood tentpoles were pulled from Russian cinemas in the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion, more than 140 U.S. films were released in Russia last year after the war began, according to data from Russia’s Cinema Fund, which tracks ticket sales at the country’s exhibitors.
After teetering on the brink of collapse after last winter’s Hollywood pull-out, the Russian box office is nevertheless off to its best start ever, with January going down as the exhibition industry’s highest-grossing month of all time.
Guy Ritchie’s spy action comedy “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” released globally by STXinternational, and action-thriller “Plane” (pictured, top), distributed internationally by Lionsgate, currently rank among the 10 top-grossing films of 2023 in Russia, according to Box Office Mojo data. More than 130 international titles are so far slated for release this year.
A rep for STXinternational declined to comment for this story. When asked about the Russia releases of Lionsgate titles including “Plane” and Jennifer Lopez starrer “Shotgun Wedding,” a company spokesperson declined to comment, though a person familiar with the matter told Variety that the company has paused new business with Russia but continues to honor contracts signed before the war with entities not facing international sanctions.
Other companies, however, have been inking new deals since the war began. A major U.S. sales agency maintained it was not doing business with any “Russia-based entities,” but acknowledged that films sold to third-party distributors could wind up in Russian cinemas. FilmNation, meanwhile, whose “Three Thousand Years of Longing” grossed more than $4.3 million last year at the Russian box office, according to Box Office Mojo, says it defers to its content producers to decide if they want to release their films in the country.