This year's French Cinema Today event in Kazakhstan will be held April 18-21, 2013, in the country's cultural capital of Almaty.
This event, which has the same name as the festival launched in Russia fifteen years ago, the French Cinema Today in Kazakhstan - 2013 was not initially envisaged as a cultural event but rather as an artistic and commercial initiative to support French films scheduled for theatrical release in Kazakhstan.
Since the event's inception, the films presented have been selected by the distributor/exhibitor Baourjane Choukenov from the Arman company. The distributor acquires the rights of some of these titles from Russian distributors, who continue to buy films for the whole of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) as a package. Additionally, the Kazakh distribution outfit Meloman takes advantage of this festival to release a diverse range of titles also acquired in Russia. The event is held at the Arman cinema (equipped with 4 fully digital theaters) located in the heart of Almaty.
The 2013 line-up includes five films, all of which have been acquired by the Arman and Meloman companies and will be released commercially after the festival: Ernest & Celestine, On The Other Side of The Tracks, Rust & Bone, Renoir, and Almost Charming.
The Kazakh theatrical market is the largest of all of the five former Soviet Central Asian republics. Despite a small population of 16.6 million, Kazakhstan boasts the most highly-developed theater network in the region (72 theaters with 222 screens, one half of which are equipped with digital technology), as well as the highest movie attendance figures (over 8 million spectators registered last year). It is this extremely rapid growth in the market that motivated uniFrance Films to create this event, which has now become a fixture on the Kazakh springtime cultural calendar.
