The French film world is gearing up for a second week of high-stakes drama as two key industry-wide meetings aim to take on the windows issue and, in a related move, France’s cherished independent film financing model.
They come hot on the heels of a week that saw France’s big three free-to-air broadcasters slam the US streamers in a letter in ‘Le Monde’, the CNC was forced to defend its president Dominque Boutonnat, following news he would stand trial for sexual assault, and an industry backlash against the latest cover of the influential Le Film Francais magazine and its lack of parity and diversity that has reignited the simmering debate over equal representation in French cinema.
The industry’s ongoing reluctance to change is increasingly being challenged by colossal shifts in audience viewing habits and a new wave of change-makers seeking to give the country’s “7th art” a modern makeover.
On Tuesday, US streamers, including a defiant Disney, will face off against France’s free-to-air broadcasters in an attempt to strike a deal over the country’s media chronology that governs how long films need to wait before being allowed to air on SVoD platforms.
The CNC is hosting the US streamers and local networks and producers to begin a new phase of renegotiations about France’s media chronology laws. It is the next step is the agreement made in January, notably signed only by Netflix. The meeting should be able to take the temperature in the room to reveal the direction the negotiations are headed moving forward.
This follows last week’s biting open letter penned by TF1, M6 and France Televisions in Le Monde that warned against the “interpretative diktat” of international platforms and called for the industry – particularly cinemas – to come together to keep the long-held windows system that underpins the French funding tradition in place. The letter was prompted in part by Disney’s threat to pull the theatrical release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in France in November and send it straight to Disney+, a move the broadcasters call “blackmail” and a threat to “the vitality of French cinema.”
“It’s a meeting to launch discussions, not for signing any contractual agreements,” explained the CNC’s deputy CEO Olivier Henrard. ”The aim is to create a calendar to continue the negotiations moving forward and bring all of the concerned parties together to reach a peaceful conclusion.”
According to Henrard, all of the major players – namely “Disney, Prime Video, Netflix, Warner and Paramount Plus, France’s free and pay TV broadcasters, producers and writers guilds” – have accepted the invitation and around 50 professionals will attend the rendez-vous. The CNC’s role is “mediator” and host of the closed-door event.
“Keep cinema strong”
Later this week, a small but substantial group of independent filmmakers and organisations will come together at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris on Thursday October 6, to discuss how to “make French cinema strong and diverse again in the coming years and propose concrete measures for political action”. Attendees are expected to include representatives from the AFCA (French association for animated film), the SDI (independent distributors guild) and the ADEF (film exporters association), as well as other smaller industry guilds from costumes to cameras.
The main topic of conversation will be how the industry can move forward despite the struggle of cinemas still reeling from the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns and changes in consumer behaviour.
The meeting has been convened following a letter written in Le Monde in May entitled ’The political choices of our institutions are seriously weakening the cinema’, that also included high-profile signatures André Techiné and Carole Bouquet among others.
The letter accused the CNC of an “audio-visualisation” approach to industry support that favours the incoming US platforms and TV broadcasters to the detriment of classic film productions meant for theatrical release.
The much-admired French film funding system is based on an ’avance sur recettes’ established in 1960 and administered by the CNC. The idea is simple – a portion of box office revenue goes into funding upcoming films. This benefits all producers, but particularly independent and first-time productions. This means French films can range from the €60m The Three Musketeers to Alice Diop’s low-budget festival favourite Saint Omer. The question facing both the CNC and local producers and distributors is the same: how to adapt a system that has worked for years to new consumer habits? Declining theatrical audiences means declining funds for filmmakers and producers.
Although the media chronology plan includes a diversity clause whereby Netflix must direct part of its €40m ($45.5m) investment in projects with a budget of less than €4m ($4.5m), this is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the ’avance sur recettes’.
During the pandemic, the CNC provided €290m in government funding to the film industry, with €220m for cinemas and €85m for production and distribution. The CNC has also just announced a €4m measure that it will present to its board of directors at a meeting on Tuesday designed specifically to support distributors through additional selective aids, targeted in particular at their investments in upcoming films.
These extra funds are in addition to the extension of the guarantee fund for filming, both cinema and audiovisual, set up in May 2020 to compensate for the lack of Covid guarantee by traditional insurers that will be confirmed this week.
The future
At the heart of each of these overlapping battles is the core issue of France’s reluctance to change at odds with its necessity to evolve with changing times and technologies. The internal debates sweeping the French industry are nothing new and are reflective of the issues facing film professionals across the globe namely how the industry can move forward to embrace a new era in entertainment.
The extra heat in France is mostly due to the fact that, while most industry execs and even the country’s most powerful governing bodies, appear to have a desire to embrace change, the structure of the film funding system has been so rock solid that industry insiders fear that if it crumbles, the entire industry will fall hard. This week’s “meetings” and “negotiations” won’t spark any imminent overnight contracts being signed or hands shaken, but they will be telling signs of the temperature in the room and the health of the French film industry moving forward.
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