Director R. Abdulayev: “All you have to do is sit and watch someone sell your film” | Culture

– Do you think it is possible to completely stop the distribution of illegal films?

– I think not yet.

– What is missing for this to be done?

– Global laws lack measures to curb piracy. Well, for example, a CD recording of our movie You’re My Diamond is being distributed on eBay and there’s nothing we can do as the creators of that movie.

Piracy cases – attributed to officials who may not even have encountered it.

We try to contact the Lithuanian police, but they simply stop the investigation, saying that they can’t investigate anything because they don’t even know where to start. Lithuanian officials don’t know how to fight it, so I think there should be some kind of separate unit that specializes in piracy, because now piracy cases are assigned to officials who may not even have encountered it.

– How do Lithuanian films enter the international illegal film market?

– There is no big secret. When you submit a film to some platform (it doesn’t matter: television or online), your film can be downloaded from that second. This is because those platforms do not have adequate protection against “pirates”.

Personal archive photo/Ruslan Abdulayev

– And which of your films is mostly illegally distributed?

– The pirates are more interested in the movie “You are my diamond”: it was stolen from the TV platform, then it ended up in the Russian market, and from there it spread very widely to the Indian and American markets.

Officials who monitor illegal distribution said that the movie “You are my diamond” has already been downloaded about 19 million times in about half a year, so imagine the loss we as a production company suffered. Movie thefts cause production companies to go into debt and even go bankrupt.

– How is the search for people distributing films illegally in Lithuania?

– After finding out that the film is stolen, a statement is written to the police, and then they see whether to start a pre-trial investigation. At the moment, the process is not going on, because we applied for the CDs sold by our film on the eBay platform and provided all the information, but we received an answer that they refuse to start a pre-trial investigation, and we are complaining about their answer to the prosecutor’s office.

I cannot comment further: here one should already ask the police why they refuse to open an investigation when there is an obvious crime. All you have to do is sit back and watch someone sell your movie.

The film “Tu mano diamantas” has already been downloaded about 19 million times in about half a year. times, so imagine the loss we experienced.

– Where else is your film distributed?

– We know that it was shown illegally in some Russian city, in a local cinema center. You can imagine how everything is uncontrolled and out of control. We had little hope that we would be able to fight with the aggressor country, but we hope that the eBay situation will be resolved.

Well, in any case, we are the first production company that succeeded in punishing pirates in Lithuania, so we are happy about that and will try to continue to catch them. Well, my request as a developer is to allow developers to earn.

– You mentioned that stolen films cause a lot of losses. So how do you stay motivated to keep creating?

– The biggest motivation is the remaining debt to the team. Then, of course, comes creative motivation. I think it’s like in sports: until there is no result, until there is that first place, then you have to try. I have that goal too. And we’ll keep moving forward until we get to the Oscars.

Personal archive photo/Ruslan Abdulayev

– What is special about your third film and how will it help you get out of debt?

– The film is special in that there is no such Lithuanian film yet. This is a survival film, a crime drama about self-testing, the desire to escape from a deadly situation. For now, I can only reveal that the film will feature professional actors, and I promise an interesting plot, and we will reveal more information on Maobori’s social networks.

The film will be called “The Pit” and will be released in theaters in early July.

Vilnius University Society of Young Journalists (VU JŽD) is an initiative uniting schoolchildren and students, the goal of which is to bring together young people with various journalistic interests from all over Lithuania and allow them to fulfill their creative potential in practice.