Despite the abundance of streaming platforms, an entrepreneur decided to create a new one, devoted to French cinema, for Francophile and Francophone expatriates in North America in need of Gabin and Camille Cottin.
The new service, called Cinessance, was launched on Tuesday on the Internet, in the United States and in Canada, with a catalog of 100 films to begin with, from Claude Sautet to the latest Cédric Klapisch via the animated film. Kirikou or Taxi for action lovers made in France.
Clément Monnet, the founder of the company, had this idea because he was “frustrated” not to easily find French films on existing platforms, in particular to show them to his American wife.
And he thinks that beyond expats like him – he’s been living in the San Francisco area since 2015 – there’s a market to be taken.
“France is the second largest exporter of films in the world, in theaters, behind the United States. In North America alone, there are 14 million tickets for French films sold in cinemas on average each year, ”he explains.
“We see that French cinema is popular, but there is no easy path for classics and recent films. However, it is a captive market, these consumers do not have access to LaCinetek or myCanal. “
To meet its costs, the platform needs 30 times more users than it has films – or 3,000 subscribers to start. A figure that Clément Monnet intends to reach from the very first months.
The saturation of the market, with the leader and veteran Netflix, Disney + and its inexhaustible catalogs or even Amazon’s Prime Video service, does not worry him. “People keep their subscription to at least one generalist platform, and more and more they take a complementary subscription to another service, a little cheaper and more targeted,” he says, citing for example Shudder for films horror or Viki for Korean dramas (acquired by Rakuten).
Fans will be able to subscribe to Cinessance for US $ 6.99 per month, or $ 69.99 per year. Clément Monnet plans to expand his bookstore to more than 1,000 titles by 2023, and is also negotiating the rights for television series.