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. Высоцкий. Спасибо, что живой—Vysotsky. Thank you for being alive (Rus)—$27.4m
2. Ёлки 2—Christmas Trees 2 (Rus)—$24.5m
3. Шерлок Холмс: Игра теней—Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows—$21.7m
Sherlock Holmes is an incredibly popular character in Russia, in large part because of the success of a Soviet television series made surrounding the character. Even many English Sherlock Holmes aficionados argue that Vasily Livanov was the greatest Holmes of all time. That said, the new movies starring Robert Downey Jr. have also been quite popular in Russia. The translation of the movie’s name here contains no surprises—it is a direct translation.
4. Иван Царевич и Серый Волк—Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf (Rus)—$20.8m
5. О чем еще говорят мужчины—What Men Still Talk About (Rus)—$13.8m
