Ukrainian theatres refuse to screen The Dawns Here Are Quiet remake

A number of cinema theatres in Ukraine have refused to screen the 2015 remake of Soviet classic The Dawns Here are Quiet, which local distributors have attributed to commercial, not political, reasons.

“We only have two screens at our theatre so we can’t run too many films simultaneously,” a theatre owner told Vesti. “We have to rule in favour of a more commercially viable one.” Some theatre owners have attributed the decision not to the screen the film to public outrage over the screening of a Russian film in the country. “Several theatres probably decided to play it safe as some aggressive viewers have already written on social media: ‘If I see a promotional poster for that film, I’m going to call the SBU [Ukraine’s security agency],’” Viliya Bondarenko, director of a Kiev theatre, told Lenta.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a bill banning the screening of films and television series “promoting law enforcement agencies” which were produced by Russians after 1 January 2014, to come into effect in June 2015. Both the original and the remake are set in Karelia in 1942, and follow a group of young female anti-aircraft gunners led by an older male soldier in a fight to the death with a detachment of Nazi paratroopers.