Now Belarusian actors will also be Russified — through VGIK

Ministers of Culture of Russia and Belarus Olga Lyubimova and Marat Markau. Photo

According to Russian news agencies, the recruitment of the Belarusian acting course at VGIK is planned for the 2027-2028 academic year. The corresponding decision was made during a recent meeting between Olga Lyubimova and the Minister of Culture of Belarus, Marat Markau.

"It is important to support joint projects that will be simultaneously attractive to young people and promote unique opportunities for creative education in both countries," Lyubimova explained, adding that more than 300 students from Belarus are already studying in Russian universities in the current academic year.

This idea is not new at all and was lobbied by the Russian side before.

As early as autumn 2025, during a meeting of the commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union State in Gomel, Russian deputy and director Nikolai Burlyaev, who is one of the most radical proponents of the attack on Ukraine, calling it a "holy war" and "battle against global Satanism," openly expressed indignation that the process had been halted specifically by the Belarusian Ministry of Culture.

He insisted on opening not only an acting but also an auteur directing course for Belarusians at VGIK, where lectures would be given by such Russian figures as Nikita Mikhalkov, Andrei Konchalovsky, and Karen Shakhnazarov — all three actively and publicly support the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Belarusian Ministry of Culture long delayed these initiatives, apparently for pragmatic reasons. The cost of studying at Russian film courses is quite high, but thanks to quotas from "Rossotrudnichestvo" — an organization that is one of the main instruments of Kremlin propaganda and promotion of the "Russian world" ideology abroad — Belarusians can study there for free.

The main problem is that after receiving a prestigious Moscow education, young actors and directors most often remain to work in the Russian industry, where completely different money circulates, and do not return to "Belarusfilm".

Therefore, the Belarusian side set a condition: training must be exclusively targeted. This was directly stated at the same October 2025 meeting by Iryna Abelskaya, who participated in the meeting as Deputy Chairperson of the relevant commission of the Council of the Republic:

"An important point is precisely targeted training at the level of state order, so that graduates of the course then return to Belarus and can realize their potential here."

This means that students who go to study in Moscow at VGIK's Belarusian workshop will be legally obliged to return to Belarus to work off their obligation after receiving their diploma. To formalize this, in March 2026, discussions began at the ministerial level on adapting a standard form of targeted training agreement specifically for such union quotas.

VGIK is traditionally considered the main forge of personnel for post-Soviet cinema. As the institute's rector, Vladimir Malyshev, noted, among foreign students, Belarusians have always been the most numerous there — 20-25 people annually.

The Belarusian State Academy of Arts, which itself trains personnel for cinema and television, periodically tried to prove its competitiveness.

In the past decade, the then dean of the Faculty of Screen Arts of the BSAM, Pavel Ivanou, ambitiously stated that "the Belarusian school, in terms of specialist training, is not inferior to VGIK," and Russian workshops had turned into "an additional income for owners of famous names."

But, as we see today, these ambitions have crashed against reality. Minsk is forced to acknowledge the weakness of its own base and outsource personnel training to Moscow, hoping solely through administrative ties — via strict targeted placement — to draw young actors into the semi-alive domestic film industry.

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