The far right’s crusade against French cinema

Dial M for Marine: The far right’s crusade against French cinema

French filmmakers fear a National Rally victory in next year’s presidential election will bring seismic changes to their industry.

By GIORGIO LEALI
in PARIS

Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO

Not even the scariest slasher films frighten French filmmakers as much as the prospect of a President Marine Le Pen or President Jordan Bardella.

As the Cannes film festival begins Tuesday, French entertainment industry heavyweights are facing up to the potential reality that a future far-right president will tear up the generous system of state funding and tax breaks that helped turn France, the birthplace of cinema, into a promised land for producers of film and television.

Le Pen and Bardella’s party, the National Rally, already floated dismantling the Centre National du Cinéma last year during tense budget negotiations, arguing that the heavily indebted French state wastes taxpayer money by financing left-wing and woke movies that flop at the box office.

Should it win the Elysée in next year’s election, as polls currently predict, the National Rally would likely either make good on that proposal or redirect some of its funding toward other priorities.

“People from the cinema world live in another reality, they are not aware of the financial problems of the French,” said Philippe Ballard, one of the National Rally lawmakers who led the effort to reduce state funding for the entertainment sector.

Ballard said his constituents “roll their eyes” at talk of state-backed cinema at a time when they’re forced to choose between filling up their gas tanks or their refrigerators.

Directors, producers and actors who spoke to POLITICO respond that such a move would torpedo a job-creating industry that, according to one estimate, generated €12.6 billion of value added in 2022, and employs more than 260,000 people. They contend the current system attracts foreign investment, projects French soft power across the globe and challenges American cultural hegemony in the political tradition of Charles de Gaulle.

Famed director Olivier Assayas, whose large productions typically don’t rely on public funding, called attacks against the French film funding “stupid, lame and perfectly counterproductive, even from a nationalist perspective, in terms of global influence and recognition of French cinema.”

“French cinema holds a privileged place in global cinema. Giving it up would obviously be an unspeakable absurdity, no matter how you look at it,” Assayas, who has helmed films featuring major Hollywood stars like Jude Law and Kristen Stewart, told POLITICO.

“You have to find a way to protect yourself from the juggernaut of American cinema — and this is coming from someone who loves American cinema.”

The French Connection

France by many metrics boasts mainland Europe’s most successful cinema industry. According to the European Audiovisual Observatory, France had Europe’s highest cinema attendance in 2024, the most recent year for which confirmed figures are available. A quarter of all admissions to European films from 2015 to 2024 were sold in France, per the observatory. No other country in the European Union exported more movies abroad than France during that time period.

At the heart of France’s unique system of funding cinema is the CNC. Created after World War II, the center supports the production of hundreds of films shot in France and abroad each year. Of the 84 films submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences considered for this year’s Oscar for Best International Film, 20 of them were supported by the CNC. All five nominees were French coproductions, and four of them received assistance from the CNC.

“We have one of the best models in the world. It’s not just me saying this — it’s the whole world. The French and European models are envied and imitated,” CNC President Gaëtan Bruel told POLITICO.

The CNC is financed through taxes on movie theater tickets; television services paid for by broadcasters and distributors; the sale of DVDs and Blu-rays; and on streaming platforms like YouTube and Netflix.

Those levies brought in €810 million in 2024, the most recent year for which consolidated figures are available, helping giant productions like “The Count of Monte Cristo” pay for visual effects or grants to small-budget films like “Souleymane’s Story,” which tells the poignant tale of an immigrant in Paris struggling to obtain asylum.

“None of my movies would have existed without the CNC,” said Franco-Italian actress and director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi.

Calling POLITICO during a break from shooting her latest film, Bruni-Tedeschi said the CNC plays an essential role in funding “films that embody the poetry and complexity of existence.”

Such projects, however, appear of little interest to the National Rally unless they have wide commercial appeal. Prominent National Rally lawmaker Sébastien Chenu, who would likely be in the running for culture minister should his party win the Elysée Palace next year, once said that it’s the free market’s job to judge which movies are good and bad. 

Chenu and other National Rally heavyweights claim the CNC funds left-wing movies, promoting diversity, LGBTQ+ rights and what they describe as woke culture.

“The main ideological battle waged by the populist right is to claim that culture is elitist, created by city-center elites using state funds to show it off to themselves while no one else is interested in it,” said Charles Gillibert, a film producer who manages the production company founded by New Wave director Eric Rohmer. 

The favorite example regularly mentioned by National Rally representatives is a recent feminist version of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers.” The film, which cost around €10 million to make, was a commercial dud. It averaged of just two entries per screening on opening day and did little better in the weeks that followed.

Bruel acknowledged not all films backed by the CNC succeed commercially but said it was unfair to judge the entire model on a handful of projects.

“Those who criticize and undermine this model by caricaturing it and failing to see all that it brings … are weakening it at a time when we need it the most,” said Bruel.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

The cinema industry also fears any attempt could undermine France’s attractiveness for foreign productions, including those fleeing Hollywood in search of tax breaks or other incentives that bring down the cost of production.

French President Emmanuel Macron pledged last year to boost efforts to bring in foreign productions as part of his “Choose France” program. In September, he will host on the French Riviera the first edition of an international cinema and animation summit co-chaired with South Korea.

“We see a number of American filmmakers trying to make their films by securing funding from Europe, or even by producing them in Europe. France is at the heart of this system,” said Gillibert, who co-produced indie icon Jim Jarmusch’s latest film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

If France gives up on offering financial incentives to shoot in the country, foreign productions will inevitably turn to other countries that are engaging in the subsidy race, Gillibert warned. That concern was shared by all the movie industry insiders interviewed for this story.

The film industry on the whole already faces seismic changes, whether it’s streaming cutting into the bottom line of movie theaters, the consolidation of major film studios or the prospect of artificial intelligence rendering movie production entirely obsolete.

Were France to cede its role as a leader in cinema now, it may never have the chance to get it back.

“This crisis is global, we are resisting better than elsewhere, but each year we are on the verge of making it irremediable,” said Bruel.