Close your eyes and feel yourself transported to mythical “Franglia,” where liberal values have triumphed over tradition, and human rights now reign. Gender identity is fluid, and refugees from the Muslim world are welcome. You know — a nightmare. That’s the dystopic setting for a new Kremlin-funded film that failed spectacularly at Russia’s box office this summer. In the three weeks it screened in theaters, Andrey Grachev’s Tolerance grossed roughly $1,315 on a budget that reportedly exceeded 200 million ($2.4 million). In its opening weekend, showings averaged an audience of three people. Meduza reviews the outrageous plot and troubled production of this historically bad movie.
Andrey Grachev’s cautionary tale of a Europe overrun by “tolerance” begins with an explicit warning: “This film represents the director’s vision that omnipresent Anglo-Saxon liberalism will soon cause the ultimate degradation and extinction of once-prosperous countries and peoples.” Grachev spent years trying to bring Tolerance to the big screen. Until now, his filmography has consisted mostly of documentaries about great men of history, such as Emperor Alexander I, the writer Alexey Tolstoy, and the wrestler Ivan Poddubny.
A teaser trailer for an earlier version of Tolerance first appeared in 2018. At the time, the most remarkable thing about the film was that it featured ultranationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin in a role as a serial killer. Prilepin was living in Donetsk and working as an adviser to the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Addressing Tolerance’s budget problems, Prilepin complained — not for the first time — that the Russian government only funds anti-patriotic films, like Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, which won a Golden Globe and the Cannes prize for best screenplay.
In 2019, still unable to secure funding for his tale from “Franglia,” Grachev reworked the script into a novel. The book’s author was listed as “Aroldo Berni,” the name of the story’s tragic hero. There was also an audiobook version, but still, no one came forward with the money needed to finish the motion picture.
That changed with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In September 2022, Russia’s Culture Ministry provided funding to Grachev. Public allocations for Tolerance are unknown, but experts who spoke to the Telegram channel Mozhim Obyasnit said the budget was at least 200 million rubles ($2.4 million) — on par with Leviathan’s state funding. Sources told the channel that the ministry sponsored Grachev’s production as a “socially significant project,” with selection committee members specifically praising the “bold and radical teaser featuring Zakhar Prilepin.”
Ivan Filippov, a researcher who studies pro-Kremlin outlets on Telegram, published a leaked slideshow from a pitch presentation that producers Maria Pankratova and Alisa Stepnova reportedly showed to potential film distributors. Both producers have worked on Grachev’s previous projects. The slideshow reveals that the team behind Tolerance aimed to reach audiences who enjoyed Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning best picture, Parasite. Pankratova and Stepnova promoted the film as similarly “bold, realistic, and therefore very frightening.”
Warning: The following film trailer features graphic violence.
The plot
Tolerance is an undeniably frightening movie, though not for the reasons its creators hoped.
Set in the fictional European nation of Franglia, the film follows residents of the small southern town of Parilon. The local pastor’s daughter is a transgender woman whose transition creates a rift with her father. In promotional posters, the actor playing the daughter is identified only by the character’s name, Kallisto Massi. Despite Kallisto’s trouble at home, the town embraces and celebrates her identity, making her into something of a local celebrity. Only the pastor’s childhood friends — a winemaker and the star of the film, police chief Aroldo Berni — share his disapproval. When Chief Berni tries to have Kallisto evaluated by a psychiatrist, the doctor declares her mentally sound. Meanwhile, church officials, troubled by the pastor’s transgender child, strip him of his ministerial duties, ultimately driving him to disown his own daughter.
Later in the film, a refugee camp appears on the town’s outskirts, and Parilon promptly descends into violent chaos. One night, a group of men from the camp wanders into town and attacks Kallisto on her way home from a bar. Before they can rape her, they discover she is transgender and castrate her in outrage. In a horrific scene featured prominently in the film’s trailer, the men then crucify her body on the facade of her father’s church. Kallisto survives, but the pastor refuses to pursue her attackers, reasoning that she wanted to be rid of her penis anyway.
Launching an investigation into the brutal assault, Chief Berni seeks the guidance of his former mentor, now imprisoned for murdering 21 people. This meeting introduces Zakhar Prilepin’s character, the film’s ideological mouthpiece. His killing spree, it turns out, was intended as a warning to society about the dangers of tolerance and multiculturalism. He murdered only “prostitutes, gays, drug addicts, and one liberal politician,” we learn, in order to send the message that excessive humanism will destroy Europe. The character even cites his own 21-year prison sentence — just 12 months for each victim — and comfortable conditions as proof of a broken society.
The film’s final act features another round of graphic violence, this time aimed at the winemaker’s daughter, who serves as a humanitarian worker at the refugee camp. The authorities do nothing when she is raped and left for dead, leading her father to attack the camp and take hostages. The police chief tries to stop his friend but ultimately shoots him dead and ends up in prison himself.
A true disaster film
Despite the many years Andrey Grachev spent crafting this supposed masterpiece, Tolerance premiered with virtually no advertising campaign. Tellingly, even the film’s distributor, Cinemaus Studio, did not publish the trailer on its YouTube channel. Grachev had to share it himself on his personal account with just 83 subscribers. Even Zakhar Prilepin said nothing about the movie on his Telegram channel.
Tolerance proved to be a spectacular commercial disaster. Kinopoisk reports the film earned a mere $1,135 during its brief theatrical run. Despite playing in 41 Russian theaters over three weeks, the movie attracted only 192 viewers during its opening weekend, averaging just three audience members per screening, according to one industry report. The film has since disappeared from cinemas entirely. Only some piracy websites still carry it.
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