According to the first provisional figures published Tuesday, January 11 on the occasion of the Rendez-vous d’UniFrance, the association responsible for the export of French cinema and audiovisual, in Paris, the French cinema gathered last year 14.8 million spectators in theaters outside our borders. This represents 91.4 million euros in revenue.
Three French films are doing well: Around the world in eighty days, by Samuel Tourneux (630,000 admissions), The Wolf and the Lion, by Gilles de Maistre (500,000 admissions) and Titanium, by Julia Ducournau (300,000 admissions). Only two films in English – but considered, in terms of production, as French feature films, The Father by Florian Zeller and Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson – crossed the symbolic threshold of one million spectators in 2021.
Admittedly, this result is a little better than the 2020 vintage which, due to the pandemic and the worldwide closure of cinemas had proved catastrophic, with 13.7 million admissions for French films. It should be remembered that in 2012, the French cinema brought together 144 million spectators outside our borders, then 120 million in 2014 and 106 million in 2015. Results directly linked to the success of films produced in English by EuropaCorp, Luc Besson’s company. In 2018 and 2019, low water had fallen to around 40 million.
But Unifrance recalls that the closure of cinemas around the world, decided between October and November 2020, continued for many more months in 2021. The regulations have been adapted according to the evolution of the virus in each country, which have been able to reopen and close them. rooms. “This fragmented panorama has made it more complicated to anticipate and set up strategies for launching films on an international level”, specifies Unifrance.
China, the leading French cinema market
The association specifies that “If the distribution of admissions according to genre sees its top triumph (drama, comedy and animation), that according to geographical area has been profoundly changed”. Europe, which captured half of the spectators in 2020, has 1.5 million fewer admissions, but remains the main export zone.
On the other hand, by country and no longer by geographical area, China climbs to the top of the podium and becomes the leading market for French cinema with 2.22 million spectators in 2021 (nine times more than in 2020), followed by the Russia (1.29 million spectators) and Spain (1.09 million). More generally, French film viewers grew by 90% in Asia compared to. 2020, just like those in Latin America.
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