Boxoffice - October 2016

SHOWEAST
AWARDS
INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR
MARCIO FRACCAROLI
CEO
Paris Filmes (Brazil)
What were your responsibilities when you first joined Paris Filmes at the beginning
of your career?
My first responsibilities at Paris Filmes began when I was 19 years old, in the marketing department.
I provided support to exhibitors for films from The Cannon Group—Freddy Krueger
and Van Damme sort of fare.
What motivated you to return to Paris Filmes as the major stakeholder and head of
the company?
My motivation in returning was emotional [Fraccaroli began his career at Paris Filmes],
with the additional challenge of rebuilding a company that had been very important in
the past. I saw a big opportunity for the future with Paris Filmes.
Paris has stood out as a great supporter of domestic cinema and owns
a big part of that market share. Is there a formula or philosophy for that
success?
A big part of why we have so much of the market share of Brazil’s domestic
cinema is because we understood that we needed to work directly with the producers
to develop the scripts and stories and to finance the projects. Our success
came because we bet on the comedies. There’s no formula, only the sensibility
to choose the films that we believe will work best in the Brazilian market. In a
certain way it’s my job to make that determination when I acquire those films at
the international festivals.
Have Brazilian audiences always been loyal to domestic films, or was
that something that needed to be developed?
The Brazilian audience loves domestic films and are very loyal to the comedies and
biopics. We have to develop those subjects and bring in famous comedians from the
stage and television to tell these stories.
The last five years have seen a great economic boom and a difficult
recession for Brazil. What has been the effect, if any, on
Brazil's cinema industry?
The Brazilian cinema was favored by the
growth of classes C and D [terms that refer to
Brazil’s rising middle classes]. The screens went
to the most populous areas, and domestic
production took advantage of this. Now
that we have a recession, we have to be
more selective in the choices we make. The
public won’t have the budget to attend
all the films being released. We need to
overcome that issue and bring in better
national titles, find stories that the audience
will want to see in the cinemas. I
don’t believe that we will decrease our
contribution to domestic production
in the coming years; we have many
public resources and a built-in structure.
Our challenge is simply to do
things better. n
46 BoxOffice ® OCTOBER 2016