This year's Online French Film Festival clocked up over 1.3 million viewings from 174 countries.
Held over three weeks, the 2nd Online French Film Festival attracted visitors from 174 countries, with over 1.3 million individual film viewings (against 40,000 last year), including 1.1 million from China alone. 24,000 film screenings were paid for this year, against 17,000 in 2011, showing a 41% rise in paid viewings.
The concept behind the festival's second edition
MyFrenchFilmFestival.com is a digital French Film Festival that offers people from around the world the opportunity to view a competitive selection of ten feature films and ten short films, as well as three films presented out-of-competition. This second annual event, jointly organized by uniFrance Films and the cinema portal Allociné, was accessible from January 12 through February 1, 2012, in 14 languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish).
Distribution of viewings per platform and per country
Relayed from the website MyFrenchFilmFestival.com, the festival was accessible from some ten Internet sites around the world:
A paying version of the festival was available internationally on DailyMotion and Mubi, as well as on Filmin in Spain, J:COM in Japan, KT in South Korea, Orlando VOD in Israel, and SnagFilm in the United States.
The festival's titles were also available free of charge on Filmstarts in Germany (a subsidiary of Allociné), Terra in Latin America, and Youku in China. Free viewing in these countries was made possible by the provision of a fee paid to the films' copyright owners by private partners.
- The festival's leading portal, the Chinese video site Youku, generated 1.1 million film viewings.
This new festival partner accounted for 80% of this year's film viewings, bearing witness to the strong interest from Chinese audiences, who are constrained in their consumption of foreign films by their country's quota system restricting theatrical distribution of foreign titles.
- Another new partner of the event, the major Latin American portal Terra, also offered film viewings free of charge and registered 100,000 viewings.
- Screenings accessed directly on the MyFrenchFilmFestival.com platform registered 84,000 viewings, almost tripling the number recorded during last year's inaugural event (30,000 viewings).
The top territories for free viewings were Mexico (16,000 viewings), Brazil (12,650), and Russia (12,400), followed by Colombia (9,700) and Italy (7,300). The top five countries for paid viewings were the United States (6,300 viewings), Spain (3,520), South Korea (3,100), Japan (3,000), Great Britain, and France (both 1,950).
Distribution of viewings per film and the festival's three awards
- The comparison between viewings of short films (46.4%) and feature films (53.6%) was similar to last year's festival.
- 20,000 votes were registered for the Audience Award. The award-winning films will be screened on all Air France flights starting in June for a period of six to nine months.
- The festival's Facebook page attracted over 50,000 French cinema fans. Over 65% of these fans are under the age of 34, with 64% women, chiefly city-dwellers.
Audience Award (over 20,000 votes received)
Back to Square One by Fabrice Eboué, Thomas Ngijol, and Lionel Steketee (feature film)
The Piano Tuner by Olivier Treiner (short film)
International Press Award
Journalists from 10 countries participated in the vote, including representatives from The Age (Australia), O Globo (Brazil), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany), Il Messaggero (Italy), Asahi Shimbun (Japan), Komsomolskaya Pravada (Russia), El Mundo (Spain), Little White Lies (UK), and the LA Times/LA Weekly (USA).
Love Like Poison by Katell Quilévéré (feature film)
The Piano Tuner by Olivier Treiner (short film)
Social Networks Award (jury of 100 influential Internet personalities from 20 countries)
18 years old and rising by Frédéric Louf (feature film)
The Piano Tuner by Olivier Treiner (short film)
Dates for the third edition of MyFrenchFilmFestival.com will soon be announced.
Festival website: myfrenchfilmfestival.com
Facebook page: facebook.com/myfrenchfilmfestival
Twitter: twitter.com/myfff
