A current hit on French screens, Entre les murs (The Class), winner of the 2008 Palme d’Or, has got off to a flying start abroad.
Released two weeks ago in Switzerland on 8 prints, the film by Laurent Cantet has attracted 15,500 spectators. Last week, audiences discovered the film in Belgium, with 24,000 admissions registered for 28 prints released. Both countries boasted an excellent attendance average of around 900 spectators per print.
But it was in Italy that Entre les murs (The Class) earned its most impressive opening results. 72,500 spectators flocked to see the film in its first week, with 74 prints in circulation.
The film is set to top the 200,000 admissions mark in Italy, therefore joining the ranks of successful productions this year such as Caramel (266,000 admissions), Persepolis (217,500 admissions), Le Renard et l'enfant (The Fox and the Child, 300,000 admissions), and La Graine et le mulet (The Secret of the Grain, 330,000 admissions)
Two other French productions are also making their mark in “transalpine” theaters, with Paris by Cédric Klapisch clocking up 73,000 admissions in three weeks, and Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna’s Silence) by the Dardenne brothers pulling in 61,500 spectators after one month on Italian screens.
Entre les murs will be released October 30 in Portugal and early December in Sweden and the United States, before setting out to conquer some forty international territories in 2009.
