Like most places in the world, Russia’s silver screens are dominated by Hollywood’s global blockbusters. Russia’s film industry has struggled with the financial crisis, but is also capable of producing films that can occasionally compete locally with the American machine. Once a month, SRAS provides a lineup of the top five movies in Russia by box office take—with the official Russian-language trailers from YouTube and, for those Russian films on the list, links to our Russian film site.
Below are films listed with their English and Russian titles (note that they differ sometimes), as well as how much the film has earned over the calendar month.
1. Гадкий Я 2—Despicable Me 2—$28.8m
“Гадкий” in Russian usually means “naughty,” “vile,” or “mean.”
2. Элизиум: Рай не на земле—Elysium—$15.3m
While “Elysium” (a proper name from Greek mythology) directly translates into Russian, the distributers of the film in Russia have chosen to add a subtitle to the film: “Рай не на земле” or, in English, “Heaven not on Earth.”
3. Мы–Миллеры—We’re the Millers—$14.1m
This American comedy has done well in Russia with a directly translated title.
4. Смурфики 2—The Smurfs 2—$12.4m
Smurfs are Smurfs in any language, it seems.
5. Россомаха: Бессмертный—The Wolverine—$11.5m (in August; total $22.3m)
Particularly for sequels, Russian distributors usually use subtitles, even when they are left off in the original English title. So, here “The Wolverine” is “The Wolverine: Immortal.”
