As a metaphor for dissident life under Soviet repression, the science-fiction novel Inhabited Island enjoyed cult status with Russians.

Now, as a $30 million (£15 million) film, it is a symbol of Russian economic success as the most expensive movie project in the country’s history.

Shot on location in St Petersburg and Ukraine, Inhabited Island offers the latest evidence of a box-office boom in Russia as people flock to the cinema in record numbers.

Ticket sales are expected to top $500 million this year, almost double the amount in 2004. In 1995 box-office receipts were $8 million. About 250 films are in production, more than during Soviet times, placing Russia alongside France as the most prolific centre of cinema in Europe.

Hundreds of screens are also opening across the country. With ticket sales rising by 30 to 40 per cent a year, analysts predict that box-office revenues will top $900 million by 2009.

The revival of the film industry reflects the rise of the Russian middle class, as growing numbers of people can afford a night at the cinema. More than 100 million tickets were sold last year, and the Russian market now ranks in the world’s Top 10.

The market was dominated by dubbed Hollywood movies a few years ago, but audiences are increasingly turning out to see Russian films. Domestic films now account for about 25 per cent of those shown in cinemas.

“Five of the Top 10 most-popular movies are domestically produced films,” said Alexander Rodnyansky, co-producer of Inhabited Island and head of STS Media, one of the most popular television channels in Russia. He attributed the growing popularity of Russian films to the country’s search for a new identity after the economic hardship of the postSoviet years.

“Audiences need to find answers to the basic questions – who are we and where are we from? Movies bring us back to the idea of national dignity, that we are still able to produce high-quality films based on Russian culture,” he told The Times.

Film enjoyed an elevated status under the Bolshevik regime, when Lenin declared it the most important vehicle for propaganda among the masses. Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and October also pioneered many of the techniques of modern film-making.

The Soviet Union had 130,000 cinema screens at its peak, but the state-controlled production and distribution system collapsed along with the regime in the early 1990s. Russian-made films earned only $200,000 at the box office in 1997, according to Film Business magazine.

Experts date the rebirth of the industry to October 24, 1996, when Kodak opened the first modern cinema in Moscow, showing the American blockbuster The Rock. The venture proved so popular that tickets traded on the black market for $100.

Cinemas are now opening across the country, many inside shopping centres that have sprung up to meet consumer demand in the oil-fuelled economic boom. The number of new screens has almost doubled since 2005 to 1,400 and is expected to hit 2,000 by the end of next year.

Inhabited Island, based on the 1971 book by Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky, tells the story of a space traveller from Earth who is stranded on an alien planet run by a totalitarian regime, at war with its neighbour and using mind control to suppress its population.

Mr Rodnyansky, who produced the Oscar-nominated East West in 2000, expects it to earn $60 million after its release next year, which would make it Russia’s most successful film at the box office. Last year’s Day Watch, a sequel to the critically acclaimed horror thriller Night Watch, is the current top earner with $34 million.

It may also provide a breakthrough for Russian cinema to a wider audience.

Mr Rodnyansky said: “We think Inhabited Island has the potential for international success. It deals with very Russian questions about life, but it’s technologically very sophisticated and a commercial story that is relevant to today’s world.”

At the multiplex
Films now showing at the Oktyabr cinema in Novy Arbat, Moscow:
The Trackwalker Russian horror thriller about bank robbers in the Moscow Metro
12 Nikita Mikhalkov’s new Chechen-inspired version of Sydney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men
Mongol Russian-Kazakh production on the life of Genghis Khan

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