Once Upon My Mother c Marie-Camille Orlando

Source: Marie-Camille Orlando

‘Once Upon My Mother’

After an initially steady start to 2025, French cinema admissions plummeted in March, down 17.5% year on year to a total of 12.5 million ticket sales, according to CNC estimates.

That is the lowest recorded month of March since 1995’s 10.9 million admissions other than during a pandemic 2020 when all cinemas in the country were closed, and down 37% on the pre-pandemic 2017-2019 average.

Total box office in March amounted to €90.5m based on an average ticket price of €7.24.

For the first three months of the year, box office now stands at €318m for 43.96 million admissions, down 7% for the period.

Ticket sales were boosted slightly by FNCF (National Federation of French Cinemas) event Le Printemps du Cinema (March 23-25) when tickets cost just €5 at participating cinemas that reeled in 2.2 million admissions over three days, up 37% from last year.

The drop was due to mostly disappointing performances from global underachievers like Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 (Warner Bros) that still managed to take the top spot with just over 1 million admissions since its March 5 release and Snow White (Disney) that took the third slot with 758,000 admissions since its March 19 release.

French films continue to carry the local box office, representing a 47% market share compared to just 30.2% for US titles. Ken Scott’s Once Upon My Mother (Gaumont) starring Leila Bekhti as a mother of six in 1960s Paris who refuses to accept her son’s medical diagnosis, has sold some 795,000 tickets after just two weeks in cinemas, the second top title of the month.

Among the French titles dominating the top 10 were February films The Bodins Are Going Off The Rails (SND), God Save The Tuche (Pathe) and A Bicyclette! (Ad Vitam), Karine Tardieu’s The Ties That Bind Us (Diaphana) and Barbara Schulz’s early March release Treasure Hunters: On The Tracks Of Khufu (SND), a French take on Indiana Jones starring Fabrice Luchini. There were further ticket sales for February’s Captain America: Brave New World (Disney) and Paddington in Peru (Studiocanal).

60 films were released for the first time in France over the month’s four weeks including 34 French productions and eight US titles.

The industry is hoping for an April admissions boost, particularly since last April saw its lowest box office since 1999 with 11.9 million ticket sales due to a lack of major US blockbusters during the period. This year, potential hits like A Minecraft Movie, The Amateur, Dog Man, Sinners and Thunderbolts could provide a welcome resuscitation.

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