Paris hosted the annual Unifrance Rendez-Vous film market, where representatives of French film companies announced their intention to continue cooperation with Russian distributors, despite the fact that in the West, after the start of the CBO, many organizations prefer to boycott Russian culture.

Joel Chapron, a specialist in Eastern European cinema, noted that Russian film distributors have lost major foreign films, so they have begun to include European films in their repertoire even more actively.

“Cinema owners in Russia are losing money because they don’t have enough films,” Shapron was quoted as saying by ScreenDaily.

“They were left without the production of major American studios, so they are trying to offer as many films as possible to attract the audience, and French films have always shown good results in Russia.”

Representatives of French companies, in turn, intend to continue to supply content to the Russian market and maintain friendly relations that have developed over the years.

For example, Gilles Renoir, film director at Unifrance, noted that Russian viewers are among the most active consumers of film products from France.

“Russia has been one of the largest distributors of French film products for many years, in recent years it has been among the top three,” ScreenDaily quotes Gilles Renoir.

He added that this long-term relationship will not end.

French filmmakers continue to believe in both the value of cooperation with Russia and the importance of cultural exchange.

According to Unifrance, in 2022, 87 French films were released in Russia, and their revenue amounted to €8.7 million. There have never been such a number of films from France in Russian cinemas.

Films released last year include the fantasy Arthur's Curse, the dramas Brother and Sister and This Mad Love, the comedies Unbreakable and The New Toy, the melodrama Taste of Love, and the thriller Murder Mystery. based on real events.

The tape "This Mad Love", for example, in the first weekend collected 1.3 million rubles in cinemas, "New Toy" - 4.5 million rubles, and the fees of "Mysterious Murder" on the premiere weekend amounted to 2.2 million rubles.

  • © Shot from the film "This Mad Love"

As Nadezhda Motina, director of the Arna Media film company, told RT, Russian viewers continue to willingly watch French films.

According to her, recently the audience prefers family films.

“Family films are working very well now, kind ones, as well as animation and adventures,” she said.

Nadezhda Motina also attended the film market in Paris, where she discussed with partners the films that could be purchased for the Russian audience.

One of the nearest French releases will take place in March - the science fiction film Time Traveler.

“This is the story of a young girl, in which it is clear that her every decision affects her life.

In one scene, she is going on a trip with friends, but she forgets her passport and returns, and in another scene, the passport does not fall out of the bag and she leaves.

And we see how her life is changing,” said the director of Arna Media.

“This is a very interesting story about the fact that every decision we make changes our lives.”

Motina noted that among the companies in France there are those who have stopped cooperating with Russian distributors, but many are working as before.

Meanwhile, Russian-made paintings also remain in demand among the French.

According to BFM.ru, France became the main foreign market for Russian tapes last year.

So, in the first half of 2022, domestic films in France earned about $660,000. Among the films released abroad were the drama Tchaikovsky's Wife by Kirill Serebrennikov and the military film Farsi Lessons.

Speaking about the current situation in the film distribution market in Russia, Nadezhda Motina expressed her hope that by 2024 cinemas would be able to recover from the crisis.

“When the volume of Russian films grows, and they will be able to replace those films that are currently lacking in the repertoire,” Nadezhda Motina explained.

The success of the Russian film Cheburashka, which collected more than 4 billion rubles and became the highest-grossing film in the history of domestic film distribution, has already helped cinemas pay part of their debts.

Thanks to the success of the tape, the level of cinema attendance during the New Year holidays reached pre-pandemic levels.

“There are small rays of hope for the prospects of rental in 2023 in cinemas, this is very good.

The success of Cheburashka influenced the performance of cinemas for the first eight days of the new year,” said Roman Isaev, General Director of Comscore in Russia, member of the Board of the Association of Cinema Owners, in a conversation with the National News Service.

Large-scale problems in the Russian box office began during the coronavirus pandemic, and political events only exacerbated the decline in the film business that had begun.

In the first half of 2022, after the start of the CBO, the largest Hollywood film studios — Universal, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount Pictures and The Walt Disney Company — refused to show their new films in Russia.

In the summer, the Russian market also left the IMAX corporation, whose employees were fired, and the management moved to London.