Theatrical Movie “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” Co-Produced by STAR MEDIA, REAL DAKOTA and INTERFEST Won Gold Panda Award, Highest Prize of Sichuan TV Festival (Chengdu, China)

Wartime drama “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” by Star Media, Real Dakota and Interfest based on the same-title novel by Boris Vasilyev won the main prize at the International Gold Panda Awards for TV Drama competition within the framework of the international Sichuan TV Festival (Sichuan, China).

The Sichuan TV Festival is one of the most prestigious television festivals in Asia presently.

The Gold Panda Awards competition was founded in 1991 and is held within the framework of the Sichuan TV Festival. During the years of its existence, the festival has gained a reputation of a fair one and was recognized worldwide. Participating in it helps to access the latest information about the television and cinema market in China. The festival includes several competitions in the area of series, documentaries, student films and animation.

 Studios from all corners of the world, being TV content producers, multimedia distributors and independent production studios, participate in the competition for the award.

Russian and Ukrainian projects have never won in either of the nominations at the Sichuan TV Festival. “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” has launched the winning tradition: the project by director Renat Davletyarov was awarded for the best director’s work.

“To my mind, the story narrated in the novel by Vasilyev is global. It deals with universal values and it seems to me that there is nobody who has left cold after learning it. We wanted the viewers to have as their last impression victorious and prideful feeling, not sadness and sorrow; this is what we aimed to attain. We are very grateful to be appraised with the award of such a prestigious festival,” says the film’s director Renat Davletyarov.

This year will see the 13th Sichuan TV Festival, and the presentation of the awards will held from 6th to 8th November in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan Province. The festival is one of the leading cinema and television markets in Asia and is very popular internationally.

The release of the screen version of the same-title novel by Boris Vasilyev was commemorated to the 70th anniversary of victory in World War 2. The main part of shooting was done in Karelia in the summer and autumn of 2014. The premiere screening in Russia and Ukraine was held on 30th April, 2015.

The film was exhibited in theaters in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Germany, and China. It was distributed in China’s theaters on 25 august, 2015, in 3,540 copies. A serious of events was held in Beijing within the framework of the premiere exhibition campaign. The box office absolutely met the expectations of both the film’s distributor and holders of the rights.

The deal of purchase of the rights to the theatrical and 4-episode television versions of “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” has been concluded with Lumiere Pavilions with the support of China Film Group Corporation in June 2015.

The success of the project in China is accounted by Vlad Ryashin, General Producer and founder of Star Media: “We had a combination of several factors in our case: the 70th anniversary of victory in World War 2 that was widely celebrated in the beginning of September, 2015, the popularity of the story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet…”, our persistence and the proactive work of Lumiere Pavilions, our distribution partner in China. All these factors had positively influenced on the success of the deal and the speed of the distribution of the film. It is very important to not only achieve high ratings and have an effective distribution, but to be recognized among professionals internationally.”

There is a number of cases when international, Ukrainian and Russian production companies signed contracts for the distribution of their content in China, but the real distribution failed or was delayed for so long that it gave a very poor return. Lumiere Pavilions was selected as distribution partner for “The Dawns…” because it is one of the best knows and successful distributors in China actively cooperating, in the first place, with the state-owned China Film Group Corporation that is a global Chinese importer of television content. It is due to joint efforts of Lumiere Pavilions, Star Media, Real Dakota and Interfest that we succeeded to arrange the distribution of the film within so short span of time – only two months after the approval of the contract.

The TV & Film Program Market is annually held within the framework of the Sichuan TV Festival. 3,312 representatives, 1,698 organizations from 28 countries and regions of the world took part in the work of the TV & Film Program Market in 2014. According to approximate estimations, cooperation deal memos with respect to 12,353 films/their episodes for the total amount of 1,896 billion yuans have been concluded during the tree days of the market, surpassing by 59.5% the figures for the previous year.