Global box office

The acclaimed low-budget horror, "Raw", about a vegetarian student who becomes a cannibal, by debut director Julia Ducournau, also helped to pull more than 80.5 million people into cinemas overseas to see French films, new figures showed.

"Valerian", the most expensive European movie ever made, seemed destined to be a financial disaster for its director and producer Luc Besson when it bombed in the US.American and British critics savaged its leading actors Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, though they praised its special effects.But the maker of the "Fifth Element" has more than made back his enormous $180-million (147 million-euro) budget thanks to box office receipts elsewhere, with 10 million Chinese flocking to see it.

The big jump in takings followed a disastrous year in 2016, when the global audience for French films fell below 50 million for the first time since records began.Raw", for example, was seen by 231,000 people in Mexico alone, far more than saw it in France where it only sold 153,000 tickets.

The comedy "Two is a Family" starring Omar Sy was the second best-performing French film abroad, with an audience of nearly five million people.The story of a man who raises a child that a woman leaves him with, after claiming it is his, went down a storm in Italy.The action film, "Overdrive", about the a gang of luxury car thieves, sold nearly two million tickets abroad.