Serbian, Slovenian box office hits coming to EFM

Belgrade-based international sales company Soul Food will be seling Montevideo, Taste Of A Dream at the EFM. The recently established company will also be selling Misa Radivojevic’s How I Was Stolen By The Germans (Serbia), and two Croatian films, Mother Of Asphaltby Dalibor Matanic and Forest Creaturesby Ivan-Goran Vitez.

Going Our Way will be handled at the EFM by Vertigo/E-motion Film.

A teenage boy scout comedy, Going Our Way clocked up 189,675 admissions, earning $1,084,910 (€796,107) after 14 weekends on release in Slovenia through Cinemania Group on 11 prints. It is the fourth highest grossing film of all time at the Slovenian box office, behind Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (205,049 admissions), Avatar (252,646) and Titanic (411,373).

In 2010, Going Our Way sold more tickets than Avatar. On the opening weekend of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Going Our Way sold a thousand admissions more, despite being the Slovenian filmm’s third weekend.

It was also more successful than Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, Megamind and Tron: Legacy in their opening weekends.

“We attracted the target audience through Facebook and YouTube campaigns,” says producer Danijel Hočevar of Vertigo/E-motion Film. “The combination of a fun and unpretentious story with whose characters the audience can identify and the very popular Jurij Zrnec in the main role led to this immensely successful release.”

In Serbia, the directing debut of actor Dragan Bjelogrlić, Montevideo, Taste Of A Dream, produced by Intermedia Network, sold 350,000 admissions after seven weekends on release through Cinears, earning $1,338,333 (RSD101,500,000).

Set in the late 1920’s Belgrade, Montevideo tells the story of the road to success of the Yugoslav National Football Team at the first World Cup held in Uruguay in 1930, where the team consisted solely of players from one Belgrade club. The film describes the period in detail, with high production values and a young, relatively unknown main cast, plus popular older Serbian actors in supporting roles.

Starting off on 15 prints, with the distributor adding four digital prints after the sixth weekend, the film currently stands as the 11th highest local grossing film in the territory. Serbia had eight domestic films with over 500,000 admissions in the period between 1996 and 2005, when theatrical business was blooming.

Subsequent degradation of cinema network left the market in ruins and only recently the expand of multiplexes has started to slowly revive it.

Released in the same period as Avatar a year before, on 15 prints compared to James Cameron’s hit’s 14, Montevideo sold 15,748 admissions for the opening weekend, against Avatar’s 11,517. After the first week, in December 2009 Avatar had sold 28,129 ticketsc, compared with Montevideo which sold 41,797 tickets in its first week in December 2010. In September 2010, Avatar finished its 37-week run in Serbia with 311,627 admissions.