Film distributors weary of Ukrainian language requirement

Ukrainian currency


Film distributors weary of Ukrainian language requirement
http://5tv.com.ua/eng/newsline/182/0/20199/


Some film distributors are worried that the government’s plan to phase-in Ukrainian language dubbing and subtitles will hurt the industry. Representatives of government and film distribution gathered for a roundtable discussion in Kyiv on Thursday. According to the governmental plan announced earlier this month, by September of this year, 20% of foreign movies projected in theaters across the country should be dubbed or subtitled using the Ukrainian language.

The plan eventually calls for 70% of all movies to be in Ukrainian. Representatives from the “Association for Developing Cinema” spoke on behalf of the distributors and said the government plan will cost too much and complained that there are not enough facilities in the country for dubbing and subtitling. They claim that dubbing one film into Ukrainian will cost up to 300,000 hryvnia, the equivalent of 60 thousand dollars. Association president Mykhailo Sokolov said that film distributors only gross 150 million hryvnia annually and the new language requirement will end up costing 50 million hryvnia every year. He also said that the dubbing will introduce a month long delay to the premiers of movies in Ukraine.

Vice premier Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, who introduced the measure, said that he does not understand why distributors are willing to pay for the dubbing movies into Russian, but refuse to pay for Ukrainian language translation.