It won the GAN Foundation award with €20,000 ($27,000) for Diaphana at Cannes Film Festival 2018, the French distributor to help distribute in France, and had a Christmas commercial release in France on December 26th, 2018 as Monsieur. Starting with 85 screens, it finishes its 6th week in French theatres today, where it is currently playing on a 100 screens. At the end of the 5th week, the film had reached an estimated €1,360,000 in box office sales (above 11 crore rupees).
Directed by Rohena Gera whose last outing was What’s love got to do with it?, a documentary also about love, it features Court producer – actor Vivek Gomber and Tillotama Shome in the story of an unlikely attraction between a man and his maid servant.
The last two Indian independent films that hit it big in France were The Lunchbox by Ritesh Batra (2013), and Parched by Leena Yadav (2016). The Lunchbox, which also had its world premiere at the Critics Week at Cannes Film Festival (2013), made around €3.1 million with a maximum combination of 232 screens at one point. Parched ran for 49 weeks, winning laurels for being the longest running Indian film in the country till date and had an estimated earning of €1.72 million (as per producer Aseem Bajaj). Would Sir exceed one of their records? Take a look at images of it’s posters across France!
Sir has also released in Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, The Netherlands and Belgium, of which the largest release was in Germany with 75 screens (most of which showed the film dubbed in German). The film also has theatrical releases lined up between March and May in Spain, Denmark, Israel, Sweden, Italy, Norway, and Greece. In Asia, sales have been made for Japan, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and for MENA (the Middle East and North Africa), the release dates of which would be available in the coming months.
And that brings us to the most important question. When will the film be releasing in India? We asked the filmmaker Rohena Gera and she said she is working on a release plan for it.
“I can’t really get over the response to the film in Europe… I really didn’t expect it as I made the film for India. I did over 30 Q&A’s across 25 cities (in Europe and the US), and at literally every single screening one of the first three questions was, How is the audience reaction in India? I am so impatient to get the answer to that question!”
Well, so are we.
Take a look at some incredible images from the film premiere at Cannes here.