President Putin on children's films

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed a deep concern about the situation with Russian-made children's films, especially cartoons.

Talking to Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi about Russia's cinematographic problems, including those related to children's films, the Russian president said: "We have always produced first-class cartoons, and we still have good specialists in this field, but unfortunately they are only known to a very narrow circle." "The number of movie houses has almost doubled lately, but the number of Russian-made movies among all those screened amounts to less than 2%," he added.

Shvydkoi, on his part, said the culture ministry was busy working out a program of Russian cinema development, which envisages an annual production of up to 100 feature films. Once the program is implemented, the number of Russian films will increase to 25% of the whole amount of movies screened.