After several lackluster years, French films are enjoying new-found popularity in a market in which they had previously held an enviable position.
2007 looks set to mark a turnaround for French films in the former Soviet Union. Figures show that while in 2006 around 900,000 spectators flocked to see the 21 French-language films released on a total of 852 prints, the first 8 months of 2007 registered close to 3 million spectators for 16 titles released on a total of 1,500 prints. If we add to this French films shot in a foreign language, the total number of admissions tops the 5 million spectators mark since the beginning of 2007. The star performer in admissions terms is clearly Taxi 4 (2.5 million tickets sold), but other French-language productions also made their mark, such as Hellphone, Priceless, I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single, and Tell No One.
In the majority of cases, film rights were sold for the Community of Independent States (CIS) as a whole, although certain member states outshined others, such as Ukraine, which released 19 French-language films in 2006 and 17 since the start of 2007. The most successful titles in Ukraine were the same as in Russia, with additional fine performances recorded by as Never Say… Never! and Paris, je t'aime, both released in Moscow last year.
In order to offer support to continued efforts made by distributors of French films in these territories, Unifrance is organizing, for the eighth consecutive year, a festival of premiere screenings to be held from December 3 through 9 in two provincial Russian cities, Kaliningrad and Rostov-on-Don. As in previous years, the films to be screened are selected by Russian distributors.
