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. ДухLess—Duxhless or Soulless (Rus)—$12.9m
2. Монстры на каникулах—Hotel Transylvania—$10.6m
Hotel Transylvania is now “Monsters on Holiday” for the Russian market.
3. 007: Координаты “Скайфолл”—Skyfall—$8m
The distributors for the Russian release of the new James Bond film have complicated its name to 007: “Skyfall” Coordinates.
4. Паранормальное явление 4—Paranormal Activity 4—$5.9m
Although “Paranormal” is a word that crosses both English and Russian in a recognizable form, in Russian it is almost always paired with the word “явление” (occurrence, phenomenon) rather than “действие” (activity). A movie from this series has been at the top of Russia’s charts every October since SRAS started its movie charts.
5. Сайлент Хилл 2 3D—Silent Hill: Revelation 3D—$3.8m
Here, “Silent Hill” has been transliterated rather than translated for the Russian market, perhaps because it is more common to transliterate place names. Had it been translated, the movie title might have been something like “Бесшумная гора” or “Тихая гора.” Interestingly, the distributors also chose to drop “Revelation” (Откровение) from the title—perhaps because anytime art combines something that might be considered Biblical with something that might be considered evil, commercial, or heretical, protests tend to ensue in Russia.
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