Ukraine’s FILM.UA Group has closed out the 2018 Cannes Marche du Film with new deals for Animagrad’s animated feature offerings: Mavka. The Forest Song (which made its pre-sales debut at the event) and box office record setter The Stolen Princess.
FILM.UA also attracted interest in its live-action headliners Gareth Jones (produced with Film Produkcja, Kinorob, Crab Apple Film) and Rising Hawk (Kinorob).
Mavka. The Forest Song has been sold to Italia Film International (a Walt Disney Studios sub-distributor) for the Middle East & North Africa region — the company screened Stolen Princess there in April. The film has also received offers from distributors in the Baltic countries, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Vietnam, ex-Yugoslavia, Portugal, India and Israel, currently in negotiation.
“Thanks to our activities at the markets and pitches and the attention of the international press, everybody at the market knows about MAVKA. No doubt, the opening of sales started a new development stage both for the project and the Group as a whole,” said Igor Storchak, distribution director of FILM.UA Group.
Evgeniy Drachev, international sales manager, added: “The following market we’ll be presenting Mavka at will be SIFF market under the aegis of Shanghai International Film Festival. Potential buyers from China are the ones most interested in the project: they see similarities between our cultures and “closeness” of Mavka universe key elements to the Chinese mentality, especially to the authentic music in the film and the ability of the cartoon’s protagonist to change her appearance depending on her mood. That is why our potential sale to China doesn’t just mean a sale of an animation feature, but one of the whole ‘Universe,’ i.e., adaptation of VR and AR applications, branded books and children’s merchandise sales, series and 3D show production rights, clothing lines, and authentic jewelry.”
Notably the first animated feature produced in Ukraine, The Stolen Princess continues to win over buyers around the world. At Cannes, the comic fairytale adventure sold to Antenna Entertainment for Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Brunei & Indonesia). The film is also heading to Spain via Selecta Vision, and negotiations for Italy were begun at the market.
“Evgeniy and I are grateful to the project team, namely producer Egor Olesov, delivery manager Nadya Korotushka who organizes and ensures The Stolen Princess materials transfer to our international partners, production manager Oleksandra Lutsenko who organizes the preparation of these materials, PR and marketing department headed by Polina Tolmacheva – its work was highly visible in Ukraine, and it is the one taking care of the Princess’ international promotion,” noted Storchak. “At Marche du Film, we received a lot of compliments about the work of these people; our clients from different countries say that they haven’t received such amount of high-quality and diverse promotion materials from any other independent content producer.”
