Competition films were snapped up by Russian distributors
Soyuz-Video, Centre Scip-Film and Paradise Agency were among a dozen domestic distributors which attended the festival to pick up the best titles. Soyuz-Video is a giant Moscow-distributor and producer of domestic and imported video/audio/CD product, which operates through a network of dealers and branch offices in 80 Russian cities. To its 500-title catalogue it has added a few more titles from the festival programme.
Valeri Rouzin, head of the Moscow's Centre Scip-Film distribution company, boasted of the successful acquisition of The President and his Woman, which opened the festival as a non-competition premiere.
NTV, a fast-rising three-year-old independent TV company, which broadcasts to an audience of 102 million, plans to air some of the festival's top films via the newly-launched satellite network.
'The festival has a good future and that means good business potential for my company,' says Vladilen Arsenyev, NTV's programming and acquisition director.
