At 84, Claude Lelouch – who has just finished with Sandrine Bonnaire and Gérard Darmon Love is better than life, slated for theatrical release on January 19 – is sponsoring the project of one of his five daughters, Sarah. “Cinema needs new ideas”, assures this patriarch, who produced all his films himself.
Journalist, producer and director of fictions and documentaries, Sarah Lelouch created La DCF, for the “diversity of French cinema”, a company intended to finance the development, particularly writing, of films and series. Its particularity is that it will create in January a cryptocurrency, the klapcoin (which will be equivalent to 10 euro cents). “Unlike Sofica [les sociétés pour le financement de l’industrie cinématographique et audiovisuelle] which allow tax exemption but require a significant minimum investment [5 000 euros], our cryptocurrency is for all those who love cinema. We are democratizing the financing of films since it will be possible to invest from one euro ”, explains the financier Joël Girod, co-managing director of La DCF.
“Anti-money laundering filters”
The company’s capital is 50% owned by Sarah Lelouch, the other half being in the hands, therefore, of producer Joël Girod, as well as two other financiers, Fabien Berger and Sabine Tellier. Together, they hope to recover between 2 and 8 million euros during a first fundraising. The goal is to start writing fifteen to twenty projects, to resell them to producers who will shoot them. A selection committee will validate the chosen initiatives and investors can be consulted to give their opinion on certain decisions.
The DCF has enlisted the technical services of Exaion, an EDF subsidiary specializing in blockchain, to avoid any risk of money laundering. Fatih Balyeli, CEO of Exaion, ensures that “All anti-money laundering filters are in place in this operation”. In the cinema, Exaion is already using a blockchain process to secure the images that have just been shot before they are sent to the post-production studio.
“It’s a bet to create a new currency”, recognizes Sarah Lelouch. Joël Girod is sure to convince a young generation who does not want to miss a new bitcoin. Claude Lelouch, honorary president of La DCF, admits all the same that he “Did not fully understand how cryptocurrency worked.”