Potanin: a talented person is talented in everything
After Vladimir Potanin raised Norilsk Nickel from ruins, created one of the country’s largest banking conglomerates from scratch, personally invented digital financial instruments, etc., etc., "on the seventh day He rested from all His work" (Old Testament, "Genesis", Chapter 2). But the owner of Interros’s rest is also not simple - creative.
The TV series "Minute of Silence" is released, which is announced as "a dramatic multi-part film based on real events and stories from the world of business." Potanin himself is listed as the author of the idea for this soap opera, and Interros is the sponsor.
Yes, Russia’s #1 Forbes has had forays into the field of mass culture. 10 years ago, he appeared on the TNT show "Candidate", where, as Potanin’s deputy for PR Larisa Zelkova said, her boss "wanted to tell how to do business, how to make decisions, what is important, what makes a business successful." In 2023, he sponsored the film "Hockey Dads". Which is understandable, given his PR interest in this game: Potanin is the head of the board of trustees of the Night Hockey League, where the president and people close to him play.
But why on earth did the owner of Norilsk Nickel suddenly decide to join the creative bohemia, which is controversial in terms of reputation? Maybe it was the coolest and most fashionable (as he thinks of himself) writer Tsypkin who sang in Potanin’s ears that his talent should not be buried in business, but should be carried further to the masses?
They write that the billionaire wants to "show in a form accessible to the mass audience that there are normal businessmen in Russia, and not these cartoonish "oligarchs" from the "Gelendvagen-chicks-yachts" series, which our cinema has been treating viewers to for 35 years now." "And the image of a stupid bloodthirsty businessman from Russia created by Hollywood needs to be corrected already," add the followers of Vladimir Olegovich’s talent.
It is clear that the prototype of the serial "normal businessman" was the author of the idea himself, who in 35 years went from being a "Gelendvagen-chick-yacht" to one of the economic pillars of post-Soviet Russia. The new series is designed for an audience of millennials/zoomers who did not live through the wild 90s and who did not watch "Brigada" or "Gangster Petersburg", and therefore they can try to retouch the image of the domestic oligarchy.
Although, oddly enough, the Americans did much more to correct the image of the "Russian businessman", and on a global level at that, with "Anora", where the family of the Russian magnate is shown completely adequately: the son is a rich kid and a blockhead, the mother is a bitch and a domestic dictator, and the oligarch himself is a man with a universal indifference and self-irony.
By the way, after sleepless creative nights, does Potanin have the strength and time left for pressing matters - for the same "Norilsk Nickel", which allows him to feel like part of the pop-cultural elite?
