Boxoffice Pro - January 2020

TOP WOMEN IN GLOBAL EXHIBITION
ГРОМКАЯ СВЯЗb
Loudspeaker Mode is
a remake of the 2016
Italian film Perfect
Strangers (2016)
What is it that initially made you want to join the
film exhibition industry in 2013?
The opportunity to work with people. I had
quite a lot of experience in film promotion as well
as event organization. But I hadn’t seen the result of
what I was doing. Cinema is a great industry. It is
entertainment and retail at the same time. So you
should be business-oriented and consumer-oriented
at the same time. This is what I was always about
as a marketing person. I was also super lucky to
become a part of Paul Heth’s team. They believed in
me, and I had a promotion in a few years.
Do you have a favorite among Karo’s theaters?
I think that our best cinemas are the cinemas for
the new generation, which established a new standard
for the film exhibition industry. But our team
is doing absolutely fantastic things and bring great
results even in small locations, which is much harder
to do. Theater directors are the number one people
in our company.
What have been the highest-grossing local films
for you so far in 2019? [Note: This interview was
conducted in late October.]
This year, the box office leaders in Russia are
across different genres: the patriotic war movie
T-34; the comedy Громкая связь (Loudspeaker
Mode); a local remake of Italian hit Perfetti sconosciuti;
the comedy Бабушка легкого поведения.
Престарелые мстители (Grandma of Easy Virtue.
Old Avengers); an action comedy Миллиард (Billion);
and the drama Текст (Text), a screen adaptation
of a Russian best seller that showed surprising
box office results for such a complex social drama.
Who have some of your mentors been in
this business?
Paul Heth, who developed an exhibition
business in Russia and brought high standards to
our country. He has a great energy and great ideas,
which we make a reality in the Russian market.
What’s your proudest achievement from your
time so far at Karo?
Over the last few years we significantly changed
our repertoire and consumer approach. We also
implemented new technologies, focusing on innovation.
That includes our market-leading “u-choose”
bars, offering self-service snacks, healthy food,
and a kids’ menu—all in all, up to 300 items. The
introduction of these new format cinema bars was
followed by a period of serious business growth,
setting us apart from the stagnation experienced by
our competitors.
Then, we engaged in overall digitization of the
60 JANUARY 2020
0120_Women.indd 60
12/19/19 3:51 PM