Evgenia Markova, CEO of Roskino
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 Animation 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.