International - Flame burns bright

More than 100,000 Danes flocked to cinemas to watch Ole Christian Madsen's war epic Flame & Citron, which at $10m is one of the region's most expensive local productions.

In its first three days on release, the two-hour-plus project boasted an impressive screen average of $19,118 from 73 screens for a three-day gross of $1.4m - taking 34th spot in this week's international chart.

Local experts predict the film could hit 400,000 admissions by summer, a good sign for Denmark where local films have underperformed over the last couple of years.

Madsen is best known as the director of small arthouse films Kira's Reason, Angels In Fast Motion and Prague. His new movie, which shot in Denmark, Prague and Berlin, is his first serious move into the international mainstream. The storyline centres on two notorious members of the Danish resistance during the Second World War, played by Mads Mikkelsen and Thure Lindhardt. They are supported by German actor Hanns Zischler and local mainstay Jesper Christensen.

The film is produced by Nimbus Film, which raised the budget from more than 30 international sources, including Germany's Wuste Film. The Match Factory is handling international sales, which will kick off in earnest at Cannes.

The highest new entry this week is Russian fantasy thriller New Indigo, coming in at number 19. Roman Prygunov's film, starring Artyom Tkachenko and Mikhail Yefremov, tells the story of people with extrasensory powers and has been compared to X-Men.

It took $2,607,447 over 361 screens in its first week in Russia, distributed by Caroprokat, which was also behind the huge sales of Pavel Lungin's The Island and Nikita Mikhalkov's 12.

Another East European entry, Piotr Weresniak's comedy Nie Klam, Kochanie, generated $2,168,854 over 156 screens in Poland for an impressive average of $13,834.

Tutta La Vita Davanti, at number 28, is a bittersweet comedy from Italian director Paolo Virzi. It tells the story of Marta, who creates her own fantasy world at the dull call centre in which she works. Another film shown in the country of origin only, it made $1,672,201 during its first week, averaging $4,544 across 368 screens.

The other new entries, both from the US, produced strikingly similar results: Superhero Movie and Doomsday averaged $3,829 and $3,593 across 342 and 359 screens respectively.

Pathe's Welcome To The Sticks (Bienvenue Chez Le Ch'tis) continues to clock up impressive results (see review, page 18). It now boasts a whopping cumulative gross of $157,314,114, averaging $11,955 across 996 screens in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Additional reporting by Jacob Wendt Jensen