Julia Matiash, Director of Russia Television and Radio’s distribution arm SOVTELEXPORT, shares her professional impression on MIPTV-2016 which has recently taken place in Cannes.

In general, there was a feeling that the number of visitors decreased slightly compared to the previous year. The buyers also noticed a decrease in interesting offers of new formats and finished products. But nothing of the kind affected Russia Television and Radio’s booth activities. Moreover, the amount of visitors even exceeded our most optimistic forecasts by 30%. The task of SOVTELEXPORT is a little bit harder and more voluminous than that of other companies. Today we are, perhaps, the only Russia’s distributor offering such a vast multi-genre catalogue. It includes large-scale movies and high-budget TV dramas alongside with documentaries and unformatted materials such as fillers and fragments for high-definition television.
Among the most significant tendencies, I would note a huge interest for the documentary "World Order". Two previous topical interviews, "Crimea. The Way Home" and "The President", have already been broadcast in such countries as Italy, China, Denmark, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Cuba etc. Ahead are Korea, Japan, Canada, the Scandinavian countries and the Middle East. The world's largest OTT platform, Netflix, has made us a business proposal in this regard. More and more people in the world want to listen to other points of view – they want to see the whole picture.
Two more of Russia Television and Radio’s documentaries have been welcomed in all territories: these are "Mikhail Gorbachev" shot for the 85-year jubilee of the first and the last Soviet President, and "Lenin" devoted to Russia’s October Socialist Revolution anniversary. Still our bestsellers are such world-scale actual topics as "Shale Revolution" and "Held Captive by Rubbish" alongside with unique materials that exist only in our library – "The Amur Leopard", "Tank Biathlon", "Expedition" etc.
In the TV-series category, the incomparable leader is the brand new drama "Russian Beauty". High-budget historical costume dramas, like "Ekaterina", are firmly in demand. So are screen adaptations of Russian classical novels like "And Quiet Flows the Don" and "Demons". The interest in long-running costume telenovelas remains high. For example, "Janissary" has extended its sales to a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.