Film poster for Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin. Photo provided to China Daily

A win for sin?

Chinese art-house film wins at the box office

Twentytwo Chinese films hit the big screens in North America in 2013 and the total boxoffice was $7.84 million, almost double 2012 ticket sales, according to m1905.com, citing figures from boxofficemojo.com, a box office tracking website with more than 2 million visitors per month. Founded in 1999, the website was acquired by IMDb.com, Inc, a subsidiary of Amazon.com.

However, $6.59 million of that was spent for The Grandmaster starring Zhang Ziyi, while the box offices of the remaining 21 added up to only $1.25 million. Lost in Thailand, a comedy whose boxoffice in the Chinese mainland was nearly 1.3 billion yuan ($208 million), made only $57,400 in North America.

Cameron Bailey, artistic director at the TIFF, admits that kung fu is still the most popular element of Chinese movies for overseas audiences because "action can be understood beyond language barriers".

But he thinks that what tripped up Lost in Thailand in the North American market was more than the difficulty of understanding comedy in a foreign language and the lack of a global star like Zhang.

"It needs much stronger promotion. Few people in North America heard about it before it was put on show," Bailey says.

"To succeed in an overseas market, a film needs to tell a story of universal values to overcome language barriers, feature global stars familiar with foreign audiences and have good promotion."