In excellent health on his lands, the 7th French art makes a little less money abroad : tricolor films attracted 38.1 million spectators in theaters last year, driven by Germany and Russia, in a difficult context for world cinema.
French export performance, which has been on the decline every year since Covid, is this time down 11% year-on-year, according to figures published Monday 13 January by Unifrance, an organization responsible for promoting French cinema and audiovisual production internationally. Tricolor films grossed 250 million euros in revenue.
These figures “mark a return to normality”explained the president of Unifrance, Gilles Pélisson, to AFP : France, with its record attendance at cinemas, was an exception last year, with cinemas struggling everywhere else. In addition to theatrical releases, Unifrance notes “belles progressions” on the platforms, where new French releases rank, for example, far behind American or British productions, but clearly ahead of South Korean works, which are nevertheless very fashionable.
The year 2025 could be promising given the price season in the United States, where Emilia Perez by Jacques Audiard has just won four Golden Globes, underlines Gilles Pélisson. As for A little something extra, hit of the year in France, “it is sold and marketed in many countries even if the entries are not there yet.”
Last year, Germany was the country most fond of French productions, with 4.1 million entries. And an effect Anatomy of a fall, the Golden Palm 2023 being worn by a German actress, Sandra Hüller.
Russia, where American films are no longer officially broadcast since the invasion of Ukraine, finished on the second step of the podium, with 3.7 million entries. Western economic sanctions against Moscow do not prohibit the export of French films, even if certain productions have decided to no longer broadcast their works there.
-The country continues to be an important outlet for French cinema, which over the last ten years has made between 1 and 6 million annual entries. “There is an appetite among the Russian population for our cinema, many Francophile Russians who are attracted by our culture,” eexplains Gilles Pélisson. In this matter, the links go back to the Soviet era, explains for AFP the Russian film critic Maxime Erchov, who underlines the popularity in their time of comedies with Pierre Richard, Gérard Depardieu or Louis de Funès.
“After the disappearance of American blockbusters, (Russian distributors) willingly buy their films in France. They don’t have a huge choice of countries.” This year, the Russians appreciated Le Comte de Monte Cristo and wait “impatiently” the biopic of Saint-Exupéry, played by Louis Garrel, which is due to be released in the country in February, he adds.
“French cinema in Russia has a niche, but stable position,” confirms Pavel Vereshchaguine, one of the managers of the Moscow distributor Central Partnership. “It does not compete with American blockbusters (released before 2022) or Russian blockbusters” but “attracts its audience”with very identified stars like Jean Reno or Vincent Cassel. Valerian and the City of a Thousand planets (in 2017) and Lucy (in 2014), the last two major French successes in Russia, by Luc Besson, each attracted more than three million Russians in theaters.
Generally speaking, the new adaptation of the Comte de Monte Cristowith Pierre Niney, a success in France which had been designed to also work abroad, is having a great international career. It is the most seen film of the year outside of France (3.3 million entries, 20.7 million euros in revenue in 54 countries), notably in Belgium and Luxembourg, but also in Bulgaria or Ukraine.
Anatomy of a fall continued to attract moviegoers around the world, with 4.9 million entries since its release, including 3.2 million last year. On the third step of the podium, The Last Jaguar, a family adventure film which only had a million admissions in France, garnered 2.4 millions of spectators in the rest of the world.
