More Than Five Million Attend the Russian Film Festival in China

The Russian Film Festival was organized by ROSKINO and received support from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the People’s Daily, a Chinese media company. Chinese viewers had the chance to see seventeen Russian films free of charge within three weeks.

Inna Shalyto, CEO, ROSKINO:“These are excellent results. We’re glad to see that Chinese viewers have such a strong appreciation for contemporary Russian cinema. Their preferences confirm the Chinese market trend which favors sci-fi and spectacles with powerful visual effects. Fyodor Bondarchuk’s sci-fi film Attraction was the undisputed winner with more than 2.5 million viewers. In general, China has always been fond of epic action films. The Russian Film Festival in China has been the most successful event in the RFF’s history, and we’re already engaging in negotiations with our Chinese partners about areas of collaboration in 2023.”

Fyodor Bondarchuk, director and producer, Attraction: “Today, Chinese viewers may be rightfully called the most dedicated audience for blockbuster films. Chinese epics are increasingly winning the global box office, earning billions of RMB. Being appreciated by these seasoned viewers, well-versed in the genre, is a real pleasure for our company.”

Attraction, an epic sci-fi drama about humankind’s first contact with an alien intelligence, proved to be the top film at this year’s festival, drawing in more than 2.5 million people. As Russia's first modern alien invasion movie, it is a story of how the fate of humanity is irrevocably altered after a mysterious UFO crash lands in Moscow. Attraction is a real tour de force of modern CGI that features plenty of edge of your seat action.

Based on a true story dating back to 1985, Salyut-7 is another film about outer space that came in second. A rescue mission turns into a dangerous challenge when the Salyut-7 space station suddenly stops responding to communications from mission control.

Closing out the top three was Partner, a comedy about a special police operation gone awry that has the film’s hero, the veteran police major Khromov, end up trapped inside the body of a baby — all thanks to the curse of a fortune teller! And yet, despite having to trade his police cruiser in for a stroller, he still manages to cause no small amount of trouble for the evil criminal syndicate. Here, for the first time in the history of world cinema, we have a baby as the main character that was brought to life with the aid of CGI. Sergey Nevshupov, the film’s lead VFX supervisor who previously collaborated with Peter Jackson’s WetaDigital company, has had his work featured in such blockbusters as The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, King Kong, and many others.