In a report released on Wednesday, the Court of Auditors calls for “a thorough reform of aid” to cinema, which it considers too numerous.
The Court of Auditors joins the debate on public support for French cinema, considering that we are helping too many films which cannot find their audience in theaters.
In a report unveiled on Wednesday, the highest financial court looks at more than a decade (2011-2022) of management of the National Center for Cinema and Animated Images (CNC), an institution dependent on the Ministry of Culture.
Its report is laudatory for a public institution which generates nearly 700 million euros in annual resources for the sector, which it has enabled to get through the pandemic and adapt to the arrival of platforms like Netflix.
“In-depth aid reform”
But one of its recommendations risks making noise: the Court of Auditors calls for “a thorough reform of aid” in the cinema, too numerous (around a hundred) and too complex for his taste.
Enough to relaunch the debate barely six months after the intense controversy launched by the words of director Justine Triet, receiving her Palme d’Or at Cannes for Anatomy of a fall. She had taken the public authorities to task, accused of wanting “to break” cultural exception and sacrificing support for young authors on the altar of profitability.
>>Cinema, taxes, aid and financing: explanations after Justine Triet’s declarations at the Cannes Film Festival
“Ungrateful and unfair”, replied the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, before the political world took up the subject. The right had mocked a “spoiled child and so conformist” (the LR mayor of Cannes David Lisnard), when the leader of LFI Jean-Luc Mélenchon applauded the symbol of a “resistant left”.
Profitability
The diagnosis of the Court of Auditors is intended to be nuanced. He recalls that the CNC remains guarantor “of the French model, known as cultural exception, combining independent production and creativity”.
It’s this model “which has enabled the maintenance of a market share of French films of nearly 40%, the development of a powerful animation sector and audiovisual series now dominant on the French market (unlike what was the case about fifteen years ago)he takes care to remind us.
But the financial magistrates point out the fact that aid to cinema continues to swell, for French films that are increasingly varied, but which are also more and more numerous not to find their audience in theaters. A third of French films attracted fewer than 20,000 spectators in theaters in 2019, compared to a quarter a decade earlier, notes the Court.
It also looks at their profitability, a burning question for a sector that is both art and industry. Only 2% of films are profitable through their theatrical exhibition, according to the Court’s calculations.
Influence of French cinema
The report looks at the best-known aid, the advance on receipts, which helps reduce risks during the production of a film. And underlines that certain authors are frequently supported, such as the documentary filmmaker Claire Simon, financed seven times in ten years, Arnaud Despleschin (five times), or Justine Triet (four times).
To those who brandish the success of French authors in major festivals, or who advocate “cultural value of a film (which) is not reducible to its public success alone”the magistrates respond that the overflow of films does not allow them to stay on screen long enough to meet their audience.
“The CNC and the Ministry of Finance, in particular on the aspect of tax credits, must learn the lessons of this situation which results in financing, with public funds, an ever-increasing number of productions, an increasing part of which is “between them, the contribution to the success and influence of French cinema, central objectives of the support policy, seems far from being convincing”, financial magistrates deduce from this.