The general director of Lenfilm has been put on the wanted list: the studio will again change its director

Can’t get out of a black hole

The 30th head of the Lenfilm film studio, Fyodor Shcherbakov, has been put on the wanted list. Information about this appeared in the database of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is also reported that he is wanted under an article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – without specifying. Conversations that the general director of Lenfilm had disappeared somewhere began in the film community in November last year. No one has been surprised by anything there for a long time. He left and did not return, did not withdraw his powers (however, it turned out that Shcherbakov is on unpaid leave until February 29), someone else will come, another one, as has happened more than once.

It was rumored that Shcherbakov left for Turkey after Safonov’s arrest in the case of extortion from top manager Vasily Brovko, Tina Kandelaki’s husband.

You won’t surprise Lenfilmov residents for a long time. They are accustomed to frequent changes of power, the appearance of random people who often have no idea about the specifics of film production. Only under the chairman of the board of directors of Lenfilm, Fyodor Bondarchuk, who has held this post since 2012, Shcherbakov is already the third general director after Eduard Pichugin (years of leadership of Lenfilm – 2012–2020) and Inessa Yurchenko, who held out as acting from February to September 2020 .

Fyodor Shcherbakov headed Lenfilm on September 8, 2020. Perhaps, after Alexander Golutva (1987–1996) and Viktor Sergeev (1997–2002), there were no outstanding personalities there. The late Zertsalov, and even more so Shaidakov, who lasted about a year, ingloriously sunk into oblivion. There was also Vyacheslav Telnov, who headed the studio from 2007 to 2011, an experienced film official, quite pleasant and an insider, who was constantly and temporarily transferred from place to place.

Fedor Shcherbakov is a Muscovite, a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, worked at First and at Interfax, has experience working in government agencies at the federal and regional levels, in particular in the apparatus of the Government of the Russian Federation and the Presidential Administration, as well as in such specialized structures as “Olympstroy”, “Resorts of the Northern Caucasus”, “Sport of High Achievements” of the Russian Olympic Committee, “Russian Railways”. He was the press secretary of the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, and was responsible for domestic policy as vice-governor of the Volgograd region. Headed by Fedor Shcherbakov, the 1MI holding is a federal media outlet: Agroinvestor and Oil and Capital, 21 regional media outlets in all federal districts of the Russian Federation, as well as a full-cycle communications agency. In 2019, he entered the TOP 1000 Russian managers. There is still information about this on the Lenfilm website.

During a broadcast at the MK studio, the general director of Mosfilm, Karen Shakhnazarov, answering a question about the reasons for the deplorable state of Lenfilm, despite the frequent change of directors, answered this: “Mosfilm has the status of a federal state unitary enterprise, and, unlike From the current corporatized Lenfilm, we do not receive any subsidies; we exist entirely from the funds that we earn ourselves. At the moment when the wave of corporatization began, Lenfilm had a good director – director Viktor Sergeev. I went to see him and offered to jointly defend our interests, but they decided to take a different path. I don’t know for what reasons they decided to corporatize the studio, but as a result they lost their film fund, all the films created at Lenfilm throughout its history. Lenfilm apparently did not have working capital, and now it is actually subsidized. For me, as the director of a state-owned enterprise, this is strange, because a joint-stock company must earn money on its own. Today the situation is so bad that I don’t know how Lenfilm will be able to get out of it. To modernize a studio, huge amounts of money and time are needed.”

Currently, the first and second floors of Lenfilm have been renovated, open to visitors, where there is some kind of life, exhibitions are held, films are shown, and museum stands operate. At the same time, some production workshops have been mothballed. The loan agreement with the bank, which implied impressive amounts, did not help. Lenfilm is always selling something or trying to sell it. The losses are endless, and every time there is hope for subsidies from the federal budget. A black hole and temporary workers do not save the situation.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29220 dated February 20, 2024

Newspaper headline:
The general director of Lenfilm is wanted