L’Affaire Bojarski: When the Credits Roll, the Journey Begins
A film release and a travel destination are usually treated as two separate worlds. We think they belong together, and working hand in hand with distributors is the fastest way to prove it. L’Affaire Bojarski, shot in Lyon, is the proof.
L’Affaire Bojarski in Lyon: the moment a release becomes an invitation
Every distributor spends weeks building excitement around a release date. Then that excitement evaporates the day after opening weekend. That is a waste, because the audience leaving the cinema has just spent two hours falling for a place.
Take La copia perfecta, the Spanish release of L’Affaire Bojarski. Adso Films brought it to cinemas on 10 July. The crew shot much of the film in and around Lyon, so viewers walked out already half in love with the city. Instead of letting that feeling fade, we tied it to something real. We offered one lucky viewer a trip to Lyon to stand where the crew made the film. As a result, a release date stopped being an end point and became the start of a journey.
Why distributors and destinations belong at the same table
Distributors have attention, and destinations have something to do with it. That is exactly why the two should be talking. A studio can put a location in front of millions of people. However, it has no way to turn that screen time into a visit. A tourism board, on the other hand, has the visit but no such audience. When you put them in the same room, each side suddenly has what the other was missing.
For the Lyon campaign, we sat down with Adso and The Travelling Set. Together, we built a giveaway around the release: flights, two nights and a digital guide to the real filming locations. Nobody had to invent a new audience, because the film had already gathered one. The story now continues off screen. In fact, our two winners from Barcelona arrive in Lyon on 25 September. They will discover the city through The Money Maker (L’Affaire Bojarski), following in the footsteps of the film.
Turning any shoot into a reason to visit
Most towns already have films in their past, yet they simply do nothing with them. That is the gap we set out to close. Our toolkit lets a city turn a location seen on screen into a route. Its visitors can then actually follow it, cleanly and without legal headaches. It works whether the shoot was last month or thirty years ago, because a good story does not expire. I have been having this conversation all spring with culture officers and tourism VPs across France. And it lands every time. A film crew leaves your town with the footage. So the point is to make sure it also leaves you something to build on.
