With 655,000 spectators registered for French-language films alone over the first 6 months of 2001, French cinema has attained attendance figures in Hungary not seen since the fall of Communism over 10 years ago.
Released on March 1, "Taxi 2" has attracted 417,000 spectators in 4 months, thus ranking number 2 at the box office over the past 52 weeks, behind "The Mummy Returns." Although the film's extraordinary success has swelled attendance figures to a great extent, not less than 240,000 moviegoers also made their way to see one of the other French-language films on offer.
The Hungarian market is nowadays one of the two leading markets in Eastern Europe for French films (along with Yugoslavia.) The French film festival organized annually in Budapest by Unifrance has become a vital springboard for French films, long-awaited by Hungarian distributors. These distributors released 11 new French-language titles on Hungarian screens in the first half of 2001 (compared to 13 released during the whole of 2000.) Besides "Taxi 2," these recent releases include "Brotherhood of the Wolf" and "The Crimson Rivers," which have come through with flying colors, each pulling in over 85,000 spectators after less than six weeks in theaters.
