Piracy, though illegal in Russia, seems to have taken over movie theaters across the country.

Due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, several Western countries have imposed sanctions against the country. These sanctions affected several sectors, including entertainment, which eventually led to the showing of “downloaded” films via torrent in Russian cinemas.

The restrictions imposed by countries linked to the defense of Ukraine have received the support of several entertainment companies, such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotifyin addition to film studios such as paramount, Warner and Disney, who announced the suspension of the exhibition of their works in Russia. But it seems that the Russian people managed to circumvent these restrictions.

Russian film market in crisis

The action had a huge and unprecedented impact on the Russian film industry. Russian Cinema Owners Association (The Association of Film Owners of Russia), which represents about 700 cinemas and 2,600 screens across the country, issued a statement regarding the incident:

“We express concern about the high probability of liquidation of the entire film industry in the country in the context of large-scale and unprecedented sanctions against the Russian Federation by a number of states, including those directly related to cinemas.“, the message says.

“Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of Russian films released for distribution does not satisfy all the content needs of cinemas. In addition, the release of some Russian films, for reasons unknown to us, was postponed from the next dates or completely canceled, despite the fact that these films received state support for production.”

The sector is projected to lose revenues of 80%. This prompted a warning and action was taken in some places: showing illegally downloaded films.

AT telegramand other social networks popular in Russia, several posts began to circulate from cinemas in different regions of the country, showing films such as Batman (Warner) Don’t look up (Netflix) and Red: growing up is a monster (Disney/Pixar), in addition to other titles.

On April 21, a special event with an exhibition of Batman was held at the Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow. The organizers said that this is an artistic performance with comments about the departure of Hollywood from Russia. The film was “downloaded” via torrent and with Russian voice acting.

Although some cinemas claim that they are not showing films, but other companies that rent the premises, the fact is that the industry has been hit hard by all this, and some initiatives, although illegal, are trying to keep the market active. . . .

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Source: torrentfrik