The notions of style and genre are of great importance for the fine arts. Many researchers write their papers proceeding from these notions. It is all the more important to define some scope of these concepts with regard to the film poster, as there are a lot of dark spots and confusing definitions related to this type of poster, as well as to film art itself.This article uses one of the largest collections of film posters, the poster archive of the Russian State Library as its source material. All cited examples belong to the least explored part of the collection – Soviet posters advertising foreign films. The image of the film poster is influenced by a number of factors: the established traditions of this kind of posters, the printing technique, the style specific to the epoch, the artist's own artistic style, as well as the style and school of the filmic work.The film poster artist is guided by the content of the film, its emotional tone, the peculiarities of its imagery in general. One of the main functions of the film poster is to give the first impression of the film, including its genre. This is achieved by various methods: the use of certain colors; the use of typical traits for certain film genres; thus comedy is often conveyed by caricature.Most often the film is presented by the film poster via portrait, but there are also landscapes, animalistic images, and as mentioned above — caricature. The film poster itself is a subspecies of the spectacle poster rather than a separate genre. The film poster, which is a synthetic form with respect to artistic and expressive means, combines the traditions of fine art and cinema. Given its specific variety of genre and stylistic peculiarities, the poster has its own place in the fine art.