20/08/2007

Guillaume Canet’s thriller Tell No One [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has broken the £1m barrier at the UK box office, placing it seventh in the all-time top 10 of French language films in the UK.

The film, which also saw a highly successful run of 3.1 million admissions in France, has not been released in any other foreign territory yet. Amelie with over £5 million at the UK box office remains firmly in pole position.

The film’s release benefited enormously from an award of £110,774 from the UK Film Council’s Prints & Advertising Fund to distributor Revolver Entertainment, enabling the company to expand the release from 35 to 70 sites.

Revolver’s Justin Marciano said, “We loved and fought to distribute this film in the UK from the very first screening. To have broken £1m with a foreign language title is testimony to the fact that not only do British audiences want alternative choices to Hollywood summer blockbusters, it serves as a reminder that you can still build a film in the UK”.

This marks the second time in recent months that a French film awarded P&A funds has crossed the £1m mark. Icon received £151,606 for Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which helped expand the release from 52 to 87 sites and gross over £1.3m. The award helped Icon to add eight 35mm prints and 27 digital copies and also helped defray publicity expenses.

Similarly, Pathé received £100,000 for Laurent Tirard’s Molière [+see also:
trailer
film profile], enabling a widening of release from 25 to 50 sites.

Since 2004, 33 "specialised" films, i.e. foreign language, documentary and independent titles, have crossed the £1m mark, compared to just 11 from 2000-2003 and 26 foreign language films have crossed a million since the creation of the P&A Fund. Of these, more than half (15 films) have been supported by the fund and these films have also benefited from the expansion of the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network.