07/01/2014 - Nicolau Breyner’s second film 7 Pecados Rurais is the most successful local title

Ruben Alves’ French film The Gilded Cage [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which won the Audience Award last December at the 26^th European Film Awards, has also conquered the Portuguese public, which turned it into the most successful title at the local box-office until the end of November 2013.

Distributed by ZON Lusomundo Audiovisuais last August, the comedy following a family of Portuguese immigrants in France who unexpectedly inherit a house in their native country has sold 754,195 tickets and grossed 3.8M euros. It is also the only European title in the TOP5 which is, as usual, dominated by US titles – Fast and Furious 6 takes the second position, followed by Despicable Me 2, The Hangover Part 3 and The Croods.

2013 was not a good year for local productions, which performed poorly at the box office. Apart from Nicolau Breyner’s second film 7 Pecados Rurais (lit: 7 Rural Sins), which was seen by nearly 144,000 people and grossed 740,213 euros, all the other Portuguese (co-)productions remained below 100,000 admissions.

Following Breyner’s film, the top 5 is completed by Bille August’s Swiss-German-Portuguese co-production Night Train to Lisbon [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile] (58,628 admissions – 305,696 euros grossed), RPG by Tino Navarro’s and David Rebordao (22,855 admissions – 116,211 grossed), Bairro by Jorge Cardoso, Lourenço Mello, José Manuel Fernandes and Ricardo Inacio, and Quarta Divisao by Joaquim Leitao. All five titles were distributed by Zon Lusomundo Audiovisuais.

US films and US-EU co-productions continue to dominate the distribution market with a 54.6% share against 41.4% of European titles (excluding US co-productions and including Portuguese films).

The figures, announced by the ICA, do not include the month of December 2013 yet, but a comparative analysis of the January – November periods of 2012 and 2013 shows a reduction of 1.4M admissions and a drop of 9M euros in the box-office.