The American video giant Netflix announced Thursday that it would screen in December a series of films it has produced, including three in preview, in two institutions of cinephilia: the French Cinémathèque and the Institut Lumière in Lyon.
For several days, organizations representing the profession have been worried about Netflix’s projects in the field, fearing a distortion of the media chronology and head-on competition for classic theatrical releases, in a difficult economic context.
The French independent cinema, one of the most important in the world and financed in particular by a system of redistribution of revenues in cinemas, was particularly worried. Independent distributors denounced a “short-term attraction“for spectators, which would amount to”medium-term suicide“for cinemas.
Finally, the Netflix film club, scheduled from December 7 to 14, is much more modest than the film “festival” feared by these professionals from the American multinational, which had been able to speak with certain independent theaters upstream.
Industry players feared an initiative that could pit anti-Netflix operators against their colleagues more inclined to work with the platform, but ultimately two non-commercial institutions were chosen. Will this programming be enough to reassure professional organizations?
Three Netflix films will be screened in preview during this “cycle”: God’s hand, chronicle of the childhood of Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, and The Lost Daughter, directorial debut by British actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, premiered at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.
Also on the menu: Don’t Look Up: Cosmic Denial, a comedy starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence due out on December 24 on the platform. The other six are films already released this year on Netflix.
The choice of screenings in non-commercial institutions exempts Netflix from requesting an exemption from the strict media chronology which in France prohibits films released in theaters from being broadcast simultaneously on other channels, in order to preserve a unique network of cinemas in France. world.
And the American giant, who has been keeping his eyes on French cinema for months, setting up training programs or producing new films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet or Dany Boon, can continue to show his good understanding with two institutions of cinephilia.
Netflix is already a sponsor, for an unspecified amount, of the Cinémathèque Française, financing the new restoration of a legendary film, the Napoleon by Abel Gance. As for the Lumière Institute in Lyon, Netflix was still present there in force this year for the Lumière Festival, with four films and a Lumière Prize awarded to Jane Campion, whose last film was produced by the platform.