The Russian film industry successfully participates in Dubai International Content Market (DICM 2021)

Russian companies’ participation in Dubai International Content Market (DICM), which ran on November 24-25, turned out to be a success. Over 150 meetings with professionals from the MENA region translated into several major deals, while negotiations on other possible sales are still in progress.

The Russian Content Worldwide booth, organized by ROSKINO with support from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Cinema Fund and the Moscow City Tourism Committee, presented over 40 features, series and animated films.

One of the most important deals struck by Russian companies at DICM was the sale by Аrt Pictures Distribution of distribution rights in Korea to the series How I became Russian co-produced with China, to Yoon & Company.

Planeta Inform sold the family adventure movie ROBO to Korea, and CTB Film Company sold the rights to the children’s animated series Moonzy to the Arab-language cartoon network Spacetoon.  The release is scheduled for the first quarter of 2022.

“The Russian booth under the Russian Content Worldwide brand attracted substantial interest from Middle Eastern buyers,” says Evgenia Markova, CEO of ROSKINO. ”Participation in DICM 2021 was our first introduction to the MENA region, which is an interesting and promising market for us, with its 400 mln audience open to new content. DICM became an efficient tool for measuring demand for Russian projects, and it turned out that buyers from the region are interested in a much wider variety of genres than we initially thought.”

“We are focusing equally on features, series and animation, and buyers say that our animation is conservative in a positive way, as it requires very little censorship,” she adds.  “There are also good prospects for local adaptations of Russian movies and series, as well as TV formats. The latter are especially popular during the month of Ramadan, when consumption of audiovisual content traditionally increases.”

“Certainly, DICM is a very suitable platform for the promotion of the Russian content industry in the Middle East,” she adds. “This is a good start for cooperation with this strategically important region, and I am confident that there will be much more collaboration not only in the area of distribution, but also in joint content production.”

Other companies that participated in the Russian Content Worldwide booth, including Central Partnership, All Media (a START Company), KION, Riki Group, SMF Studio (Soyuzmultfilm), Wizart Animation and Parovoz Aimation Studio, also saw substantial interest in their projects from buyers representing the MENA region and other parts of the world. Negotiations on a number of projects that started at DICM are still in progress and are expected to lead to deals.

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Russian Content Worldwide by ROSKINO is an umbrella export brand for the Russian content industry. The mission of Russian Content Worldwide is to foster international links and business cooperation through making the Russian content industry more transparent and establishing communication between Russian players that create films, series and animation geared towards international markets and are looking for partners abroad and an international audience interested in new names, original content and opening up new horizons in filmmaking.

The Cinema Fund is a Russian state non-profit organization whose main activity is the distribution of films with a goal to support the national film industry, to foster conditions for the creation of high-quality films in line with national interests and to popularize national films in the Russian Federation and abroad.

The Moscow City Tourism Committee oversees issues of tourism activities in the capital. The competence of the Committee includes legislative initiatives, congress and exhibition activities, event and image projects. Mostourism constantly analyzes global trends and offers Russian and foreign tourists what they want as well as opens up new opportunities for the capital in terms of interesting and useful pastime.

Discovermoscow.com. In July 2021, the Moscow City Tourism Committee presented a new tourist portal — Discovermoscow.com, which contains all the best that the capital has to offer. The site contains up-to-date information about events, cultural venues, restaurants and other objects in Moscow, as well as video tours. The section “Tourist Guide” contains the most necessary instructions for travel: from the rules of bicycle rental to airport transfer. The site is available in Russian, English, and Chinese.

RUSSPASS is a digital travel service for traveling to Russia. Tourists from all over the world can easily plan a trip in a convenient digital format. There are more than 3,3 thousand travel offers, air and railway tickets, booking hotels and restaurants. More than a million people have already used RUSSPASS. The mobile app is available for Android and iOS. The implementation of the project is supervised by Moscow City Tourism Committee in conjunction with the Department of Information Technology.

Source：Roski