Since Russia invaded Ukraine, sanctions have been applied against the country in the most varied ways, affecting practically all Russian local industries. One of them will certainly be the cinema industry, which finds itself without access to many contents from other countries.
However, it seems that local movie studios are resorting to a “different” method to have new content to provide to users – in this case through the use of piracy.
According to the New York Times, Russian cinemas are maintaining their activities and distributing new films in their theaters, using the internet to do so. There are dedicated film sharing groups created so that major cinema centers in Russia have a means of accessing pirated films to project on them.
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This applies as a large part of the films that have recently opened in theaters are still not available in Russia, due to the sanctions applied to it by the US government.
Although there are Russian productions in the country's cinemas, around 70% of the content consumed by users is of North American origin. As such, the restrictions applied certainly have an impact on this market.
The use of piracy to continue making content available in Russian cinemas may have been gaining strength after recent information also emerged that the Russian government was planning to facilitate local piracy in the face of restrictions.
