Russian Culture Ministry U-turn restores funding for independent film festival

One of Russia’s leading independent film festivals 2morrow has been granted state funding from the Ministry of Culture, in a move that has surprised event organisers who were initially refused financial support in August.

“The festival 2morrow will be allocated 1 million roubles ($18,763),” said Vyacheslav Telnov, director of the Department of Cinematography within the Ministry of Culture. “Organisers have completed all the formalities, they were able to attract extra-budgetary funds, which speaks of the popularity and demand for the festival.”

The festival organisers, Olga Dykhovichnaya and Angelina Nikonova, cited political pretexts for the initial financial refusal, a claim refuted by the ministry who maintained that the festival’s request for funding was never received.

After funding was refused by both the federal government’s Ministry of Culture and the Moscow city administration’s Department of Culture in August, Dykhovichnaya and Nikonova wrote an open letter addressed to the international film community, calling for support to ensure that the week-long festival could continue as planned. The letter warned that Russia could be “isolated from world culture behind yet another iron curtain”.

Today, Dykhovichnaya said: “We are grateful to the Ministry of Culture, the Moscow Department of Culture and the shareholders of [crowdfunding platform] Planeta.ru for the fact that the festival continues to live.”

After discovering that the festival’s usual sponsors were not offering financial backing, organisers launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the event, raising enough for a one-day festival.

The volatile political climate currently in Russia has meant that the ability of cultural events to secure state funding increasingly depends on the political position of the organisers. In a surprising admission, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky announced last week that the reason behind his decision to refuse state funding to Russia’s largest international documentary film festival, Artdocfest, was due to festival director Vitaly Mansky’s political opinions.