The film ‘The Priest’s Children’ directed by Vinko Brešan has achieved the most successful cinema opening in the last 22 years, since Croatia’s independence – it was viewed by as many as 33,759 spectators.
As a reminder, the film ‘The Priest’s Children’ began its regular cinema distribution four days ago in eight Croatian cities: Zagreb, Rijeka, Split, Osijek, Varaždin, Zadar, Šibenik, and Dubrovnik.
For comparison, the previously most successful cinema distribution opening in terms of total audience numbers was ‘Lara’s Choice: The Lost Prince’ directed by Tomislav Rukavina (11,105 viewers) and ‘What is a Man Without a Mustache’ by Hrvoje Hribar (10,337 viewers), while in terms of total box-office earnings, the record holder so far was the comedy ‘Sonja and the Bull’ directed by Vlatka Vorkapić. The film ‘The Priest’s Children’ with its 33,759 viewers and box-office earnings three times greater than the previous record holder has convincingly surpassed all mentioned results and firmly claimed the throne of the most successful cinema openings of domestic films.
“Every film must belong to something we all call entertainment. Looking at the viewer numbers from the first weekend of screening, I am pleased that ‘The Priest’s Children’ has passed this demanding test. Of course, films are neither statistics nor numbers, and I sincerely hope that this film makes every viewer smile, and that each of them leaves the cinema thinking about what they have seen. If ‘The Priest’s Children’ remain in the viewers’ minds longer than those 90 minutes of screening in the cinema – that will be the greatest success of this film,” said director Vinko Brešan after the announcement of the cinema opening results.
This is also the first cinema opening of a Croatian film in 2013 and serves as an encouragement for the successful placement of upcoming domestic films among the audience. This result also shows that after a decade, it is possible to repeat the success of domestic film hits that reached over a hundred thousand viewers – ‘How the War Started on My Island’ (over 340 thousand viewers), ‘What is a Man Without a Mustache’ (over 150 thousand), and ‘Marshal’ (over 100 thousand). The result of the cinema opening of ‘The Priest’s Children’ also supports the fact that the domestic audience is indeed interested in domestic films and is ready and willing to support and promote domestic cinematography.
