During the meeting, Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova emphasized that “the Ministry’s task is to develop the art of cinema. The Cinema Fund, on the other hand, is focused on supporting big-budget entertainment projects. In this regard, the department is interested in debut films, auteur cinema, social impact films, children’s cinema, documentary and popular science films and auteur animation.”

The need to develop qualitative assessment methods to evaluate the content created, the fact that the film industry is not only about numbers and money, but also about producing behavioral experience and value systems, was emphasized at the meeting by Fedor Sosnov, the Russian Cinema Fund’s Executive Director, Leonid Vereshchagin, General Director of Nikita Mikhalkov’s TriTe Studio, and Konstantin Ernst, General Director of Channel One Russia[19].

The relevance of social impact of a film as its success criteria is receiving more and more attention, and everyone seems to be coming to realization that social impact is just as important as the quantitative indicators. There is a clear understanding that this assessment format is becoming a trend to focus on.

We talked to key experts in film production about the prospects for the development of impact assessment in the domestic film market.

Olga Zhukova, Executive Director of the Association of Film and Television Producers (APKiT), believes it is difficult to predict at the script stage, what the impact of a film project on the audience will be like. Likewise, you can predict your box office receipts, but this forecast will not necessarily be close to the actual performance in the theaters. “I’m all for impact assessment,” Olga Zhukova agrees, “but the right tools must be chosen for it. In my opinion, it is not enough to take the entire target audience of a film project and assume that 20 % of these people will definitely be affected, in terms of change of attitudes or change of behavior patterns.” In her opinion, assessment will only be objective if there is a baseline measurement of audience with the right sampling. Moreover, it is important to perform social impact assessment in specific groups – a qualitative study with a baseline measurement, a display of some content, and then a discussion and a follow-up measurement – perhaps not right away, but after some time.

The expert explains: “This can be done by mixed-method research (qualitative and quantitative): determine which pictures are considered to be socially significant by the experts, take a sampling of the target audience and show them the film. This will give a good understanding the effect produced. The Russian film market certainly looks promising, and the need for impact assessment is certainly there, so it is important to measure the baseline attitudes in the society towards certain social phenomena.”

“The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, in addition to the traditional areas, has also launched a competition to support social impact films quite some time ago. At the same time, you cannot find a definition of this type of films in any legal documents, and having a clear understanding of the terms is vital, given the situation,” says Galina Sytsko, producer, head of the Social Programs Department of the Roscongress Foundation, lecturer at Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), and former Deputy Director of the Department of Cinema and Digital Development of the Ministry of Culture.

Currently the state support is segmented – there are areas of support for entertainment films made for commercial distribution; auteur cinema – the so-called art of cinema, where the skill level prevails over the commercial potential; documentary film; animation. Social impact films can fall under any of these categories, so allocating them under a separate segment, as done by the Ministry of culture, is, according to the expert, more of a PR move, focusing on the fact that the films receiving state support must produce a certain impact on the society.

“I think the most obvious assessment property of social impact cinema is the audience size. We are not concerned about revenue generated, or awards given – the key is that as many people as possible watch the film, and, more often than not, it’s about a specific target audience. And unlike entertainment and auteur films, the success of which is determined in the first weeks and months of its life, the influence of social impact films can be assessed after a very long time. Probably the best example is the film “Doctor Lisa” – it gathered a huge audience, and the “Fair Help” foundation has confirmed that hundreds of people joined them as volunteers after seeing the picture,” Galina Sytsko says.

The President and the Government of the Russian Federation regularly give orders for systemic support of films dedicated to socially impactful topics, and for development of the National Cinematography Development Concept. The drafts of the Concept focus heavily on the issues of support and assessment of socially important content, but because all the KPIs have become unpredictable since February 2022, Galina Sytsko believes we should not expect the Concept to be adopted any time soon. Moreover, the thesis about increasing state support for cinematography is quite debatable, because while formally the funds allocated by the state are indeed increasing, these efforts are in fact aimed not at making more films, but rather at preventing a drop in their numbers. “There’s always inflation, rising production costs, catastrophic losses of the film industry in the years of the pandemic and a further drop last year, the problems of attracting extra-budgetary funding, equipment, supplies, software and unpredictable currency exchange rates,” the expert explains.

We can definitely be confident about the feasibility of assessing the impact of children’s cinema, because in this case, we could and should use the tools from pedagogy and child psychology. In addition, this year there will be a significant change in the system – the maximum public funding limit of children’s films will be raised from 70 % to 100 %. Accordingly, producers will no longer have to be concerned about economic performance, so we are hoping there will be more high quality films aimed specifically at children. But since the film production cycle is 2–3 years, the effect of this law will not become clear until 2026.

Galina Sytsko also believes that the production of films popularizing the professions of teachers, engineers, doctors, etc. will gain momentum in the near future. The effect of such films can be measured by comparing the percentage of school graduates entering specialized universities, or by comparing the age profile of those who work in a particular profession now and some years later.

Maria Mokina, journalist, producer, member of the Coordinating Council on Social Advertising and Social Communications at the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Public Council at the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation, noted that the modern media market has evolved from an emotional joy of someone finally integrating a social theme into the media product, to a conscious introduction of social context to develop new positive social habits, change lifestyles, and create comfortable spaces around oneself. The result of this evolution has been the total incorporation of a social idea into the body of the media product. This has become a mandatory “burden” on the part of customers and creators.

Today, society is entering the next stage of development, when it is necessary not only to rejoice in the casual effect, but to form an effective social impact entertainment industry[20], which will produce products aimed at solving specific social and humanitarian problems.