Too many movies supported? The Court docket of Auditors requires reform of cinema help

The Court docket of Auditors joins the talk on public help for French cinema, deploring that too many movies don’t discover their viewers in theaters. In a report unveiled on Wednesday, the very best monetary court docket seems at greater than a decade (2011-2022) of administration of the Nationwide Heart for Cinema and Animated Photographs (CNC), which depends upon the Ministry of Tradition.

“An intensive reform of help”

Its report is laudatory for a public establishment which generates almost 700 million euros in annual sources for the sector, which it has enabled to get by means of the pandemic and adapt to the arrival of platforms like Netflix.

However considered one of its suggestions dangers making noise: the Court docket of Auditors requires “a radical reform of help” to cinema, too quite a few – round 100 – and too complicated for its style. Sufficient to relaunch the talk barely six months after the extreme controversy launched by the phrases of director Justine Triet, receiving her Palme d’Or at Cannes for “Anatomy of a Fall”.

She had taken the general public authorities to job, accused of desirous to “break” the cultural exception and sacrifice help to younger authors on the altar of profitability. “Ungrateful and unfair,” replied the Minister of Tradition, Rima Abdul Malak, earlier than the political world took up the topic.

Solely 2% of supported movies are worthwhile in theaters

The analysis of the Court docket of Auditors is meant to be nuanced. “We’re not advocating that there be fewer movies, however to make sure that there are fewer movies that don’t meet their viewers,” insisted the primary president of the Court docket of Auditors, Pierre Moscovici, in entrance of the press. The Court docket takes care to recall that the CNC stays guarantor “of the French mannequin, often known as cultural exception, combining impartial manufacturing and creativity”. It’s this mannequin “which has enabled the upkeep of a market share of French movies of just about 40%”, she provides.

However monetary magistrates level out the truth that help to cinema continues to extend, whereas increasingly more movies don’t discover their viewers in theaters. A 3rd of French movies attracted fewer than 20,000 spectators in 2019, in comparison with 1 / 4 a decade earlier.

The Court docket additionally seems at their profitability. Solely 2% of movies supported by the advance on receipts, probably the most emblematic help to art-house cinema, are worthwhile in theaters, in accordance with the Court docket’s calculations, which doesn’t take note of their subsequent exploitation. Sure authors are regularly supported, such because the documentary filmmaker Claire Simon, financed seven instances in ten years, Arnaud Despleschin (5 instances), or Justine Triet (4 instances), she underlines. Tax credit for cinema have jumped (160 million euros in 2022) – which additionally displays the growth in filming.

“We’re not saying that there are too many movies and that profitability have to be the one criterion, because the CNC is there in order that cinema can escape this logic of cash, however a rationalization for larger effectivity is fascinating”, certified Pierre Moscovici.

Appropriate CNC helps

In its response to the Court docket of Auditors, the Ministry of the Economic system and Finance stated it “shares the commentary of a really excessive stage of supported movies” and the “have to reform help”. However the president of the CNC, Dominique Boutonnat, regrets that the Court docket “analyzes nearly solely the efficiency (of this coverage) within the mild of the success of backed movies in theaters”. In order that movies discover their viewers, the CNC works on their distribution, picture training, help for festivals, help to cinemas, arthouses particularly…

Matignon agrees, emphasizing that we should take note of “the renewal of creation, the variety of movies supplied to the general public and the worldwide affect of our cinema”, all sides “which, on this case, show to be constructive”. It will likely be vital “to right the help of the CNC, the effectiveness of which doesn’t seem convincing”, provides Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, “in order that French movie manufacturing is seen by as broad an viewers as attainable”.