Not since the South Korean film “Parasit” (2019) by Bong Joon Ho was shown in France has a foreign (non-English language) film become such a hit, writes Variety.
Tarik Saleh’s political drama thriller “Boy from heaven”, which takes place in a religiously troubled Cairo, received the award for best screenplay at the Cannes film festival in May and was named Sweden’s Oscar entry earlier this fall.
In France, the film premiered at the end of October. It quickly proved to be a drag. So far, “Boy from heaven” has brought in around 3.2 million euros, corresponding to around 35 million kroner in ticket revenue, which in turn corresponds to roughly 460,000 cinema tickets sold. The number of cinemas in which the film was shown has more than doubled from 207 to just over 500.
“Boy from heaven” has climbed past prestigious films such as Park Chan-wook’s “Decision to leave”, Joachim Trier’s “The worst person in the world”, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive my car” and Asghar Farhadi’s “A hero”.
In addition, “Cairo confidential” as “Boy from heaven” is called in France has been shown in the original language in regular French cinemas, which is unusual as most foreign films are dubbed.