Workshop talks Vietnamese film marketing, distribution in int’l markets

HCM City (VNA) – Issues of Vietnamese film marketing and distribution in international markets were discussed at a workshop held on April 9 as part of the Ho Chi Minh City International Film Festival (HIFF) 2024.

Tran Phuong Thao, Director for business and marketing at the BHD Co. Ltd, said current marketing and distribution strategies are making it hard for Vietnamese films to access European and American markets. Filmmakers have just paid attention to the domestic market as they thought the domestic audience are more important, and films are distributed in international markets only when they make a hit locally.

Besides, comedies are more popular in the domestic market as they can easily access the local audience, but this genre is not a favourite choice of international watchers, she pointed out, perceiving that how to distribute Vietnamese films to global markets remains a big challenge.

Apart from content-related hurdles, producers in Vietnam haven’t built detailed production plans, leading to a failure in distributing films to other countries, Thao added.

Winnie Lau, former head of Asian production and distribution at a subsidiary of SKE, held that although Vietnam has a developing cinema market, production cooperation remains limited among the local film producers. Other countries in Asia like China and Japan share similarities in culture, market, and producers, so it is not too difficult for their films to access global markets.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Pham Hoang Quan, CEO of media company ProductionQ, said one reason behind limited film marketing and distribution strategies is that producers have yet to truly understand film marketing. They need to learn about their target audience, introduce outstanding points of their film projects to attract watchers, and change audience access approaches.

Producers who plan to distribute film to international markets need to make thorough preparations, including devising detailed strategies for marketing on different platforms to access as many people as possible. A successful film project in other countries needs effective coordination between the marketing staff and producers, he opined./.