In Minsk, only four people came to the premiere of the Russian propaganda film Witness about the war in Ukraine. This was reported by propagandist Olga Bondareva.
The premiere took place in the Minsk cinema “Mir”. Bondareva published a photo where she poses against the background of an empty hall together with the artist and another propagandist Svetlana Zhigimont. “An empty cinema hall and only four spectators. Who know each other very well!” – she wrote in her telegram channel.
Shows of the Russian film will be held only in three cities of Belarus – in Minsk, Gomel and Tolochin, “Nasha Niva” writes. In Brest and Baranovichi, after several screenings, the film was withdrawn from distribution. The publication assumes that apparently no one came to the screening of the film, as in Minsk. From a wide release, the film was also filmed in the “3D Cinema” in the “Castle” shopping center.
The publication checked the online service for selling tickets to the Mir cinema in Minsk. It turned out that on August 25 and 26 nobody bought tickets for the screening of Witness, and on August 27 only three seats were bought.
The Russian premiere of the film “Witness” took place on August 17. The Insider writes that the picture failed at the Russian box office. So, as of August 22, the total box office of the film amounted to a little more than 8 million 200 thousand rubles, while its budget was 200 million rubles. The picture was filmed with money provided by the Russian Ministry of Culture.
Initially, the picture was called “Musician”, but, according to The Insider, after the rebellion of the head of PMC “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin, it was renamed, because PMC mercenaries are often called “musicians”.
The film is about a Belgian violinist who comes to Kyiv and witnesses the beginning of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The creators of the film presented the Ukrainian military in a negative light, and in the final credits they wrote that the Ukrainian military were guilty of killing people in Bucha, shelling the train station in Kramatorsk and destroying the maternity hospital in Mariupol (in fact, the Russian military was involved in these events).
“Some of the suspects are not in our hands, but it’s a matter of time.” How cases of war crimes of the Russian army are being investigated in Ukraine:
