The latest Hollywood-inspired release from director Mikhail Lokshin, titled The Master and Margarita, led the weekend box office across the Russian Federation and the broader CIS, bringing in 428 million rubles. In a strong second place, Bremen Town Musicians drew attention with 123 million rubles in ticket sales.
Among the standout cast in Lokshin’s film are Tikhon Zhiznevsky, Irina Gorbacheva, Sergei Burunov, Konstantin Khabensky, Dmitry Dyuzhev, and Maria Aronova, whose performances helped anchor the star-studded appeal at theaters nationwide.
In third position on the charts, Klim Shipenko’s Slave 2 recorded 122.5 million rubles, while fourth place went to the Russian military drama Air, directed by Alexei German Jr., which accumulated 104.2 million rubles. Rounding out the top five was the animated feature Three Heroes and the Navel of the World, with a box office take of 37.8 million rubles.
Earlier in the season, the Russian drama There and Again, produced by Salt Film, earned recognition on the festival circuit and received a main award in the Spiritual Cinema section at the 22nd Dhaka International Film Festival in Bangladesh, signaling growing international interest in contemporary Russian cinema.
Meanwhile, the online premiere of the series Black Bear stirred conversations about creative life pressures and the toll of a high-stakes artistic existence, adding another angle to the current conversation about Russia’s screen culture. [Cited by Kinobusiness Portal]