EXCLUSIVE: Market is due to screen more than 100 new Russian and foreign films to industry and public.

Moscow Premiere Festival

Moscow is to host a new international film market this autumn aimed at film industry professionals as well as the cinema-going public.

The KinoPoisk Film Market, which will be held at the October multiplex cinema in the Russian capital from October 20-23, is being organised by Russia’s leading online film database KinoPoisk, Tvindie Film Production, and Reflexion Films (the organiser of the Moscow Business Square co-production market from 2008-2015), with support from one of the leading Russian cinema circuits Karo.

According to organisers, the new market plans to attract up to 500 media professionals – producers, directors, distributors, sales agents, festival programmers, TV buyers and exhibitors – from Europe, Asia, North America and the BRIC countries to its programme of screenings, workshops, pitchings and roundtables.

The film market’s key event will be the October Screenings presenting more than 100 new Russian and foreign films to professionals as well as a wider audience in Moscow.

Some of these screenings will be open to the general cinema-going public, while other presentations and special events would only be accessible to users of the KinoPoisk database.

In addition, there will be a series of Industry Meetings with pitchings and one-to-one meetings for projects in development.

Speaking exclusively to Screen, Yevgeny Gindilis, general producer of the KinoPoisk Film Market and head of Tvindie Film Production, explained that the new event will also serve as the platform of the CentEast Moscow works-in-progress showcase a week after the projects’ presentation during the CentEast Market in Warsaw (October 14-16).

Gindilis added that the market is being financed privately and will not be reliant on state funding, while Konstantin Nafikov, CEO of Reflexion Films, pointed out that the event has an “ambitious goal” of promoting the involvement of the domestic Russian film industry on the international stage, increasing the number of projects participating in leading international festivals and winning awards, and raising the level of film production.

Russia’s Moscow Business Square did not take place this year due to a shortfall in public funding.