Marie Masmonteil, who heads up Elzévir Films with Denis Carot, as well as chairing the French Union of Independent Producers’ feature films board, delivers an initial assessment of new funding arrangements for the 7th art in France, on the occasion of the 35th ARP Film Meetings which are unspooling in Touquet-Paris-Plage.

Cineuropa: The structure for financing French film production through pre-purchasing changed at the beginning of this year, resulting in a significant fall in investments from Canal+ (read our article). Since that time, we’ve been hearing rumours of tension within the sector. What’s really going on?
Marie Masmonteil: What’s interesting is that we have objective data, but I get the impression it’s more about what people feel than the reality of the situation. In terms of volume (and it’s the first time we’ve seen this kind of clause), Canal has to invest €150m in 80 films this year, but if we discount Ciné+ OCS first window investments (18 films), Canal+ is only at 62 films. Obviously, when we compare that to 2024, which was an exceptional year with Canal+ investing in 130 films, it’s almost half the amount. But when it comes to the yearly average, Canal+ was previously more around the 115 mark, and if we look closely at the figures around investment approval to mid-September, Canal+ has already exceeded 62 films, so we’d assume that by the end of the year they’ll be at 70-75, which more than fulfils their volume obligations. And that’s a good thing, even if Canal+ is obviously investing in far fewer films than before.

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This is also an incredibly atypical year, which explains the general feeling, because Canal+ stopped holding committees from November 2024 practically right up until March 2025, which has had a collateral effect. For example, at Elzévir Films the fact that we had to wait until June to get an estimate from Canal+ for Tu me diras by Radu Mihaileanu (news) meant that we couldn’t submit a Eurimages dossier in April. And film shoot preparations took longer, which cost more money, etc.

Is the reduction in the number of Canal+ pre-purchases impacting the kind of films receiving finance?
When the SPI met Laurent Hassid (director of film acquisitions at Canal+) in Cannes, he told us that he intended to maintain a fairly fluid editorial line across the full spectrum of film production, for films under the diversity clause (below €4m) and those above it, across all the different budget brackets (€4-6m, €6-8m, over €10m and above €20m). But it’s important to stress that, before, Canal+ was pretty much on it own, with only very minor competition from OCS, and it controlled the market by avoiding investments of over €3m per film. Now Canal+ is mostly in competition with Disney+ over certain films, but also with Netflix (who sometimes tended to invest in the second window stage, as it did with Beating Hearts [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]). And that ups the ante because Canal+ needs big films. It’s not so much the case with Amazon Prime, even if it did pre-purchase Once Upon My Mother [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] in the first window phase. Disney+ has become Canal+’s real competition because you can’t have Canal+/Disney+ combinations for first or second windows anymore, because the Disney+ window (9 months after films’ cinema releases) would encroach too much on the Canal+ window (six months after cinema releases), whereas you can still have collaborations between Canal+ and Netflix (15 months following a film’s release), Canal+ and Amazon (17 months) and Canal+ and HBO Max (17 months).

What about the most significant consequences of the agreement between French film and Disney+ (news)?
The idea driving the Task Force who negotiated the deal was to accept that there’d be fewer films pre-purchased by Canal+ and more by Disney+ (there’ll be 23 in fact, mostly at the first window stage), and that Netflix’s turnover would continue to grow (last year they invested in 18 first-window films), so things would even out. In the SPI, we still see Canal+ as our main partner because they pre-purchase films across the entire chain, which isn’t entirely the case with Disney+ who commit to first window releases for films on both sides of the divide: those worth less than €4m because they’re obliged to apply the diversity clause, and big films above €7m. Disney+ doesn’t have any mid-range films on their books, and we need to talk to them about it. When the Task Force negotiated with Disney+, they had the brilliant idea of introducing a clause on annual pre-purchasing volumes, for the very first time, in order to limit the risk of them focusing their investments on big films that they might have stolen from Canal+. But now we’re noticing that Disney has got around that, to some extent, by committing to very inexpensive documentaries, for example, which then allows them to pre-purchase far more costly films. For the time being, their approach seems to revolve around fairly commercial films such as Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Alexandre Castagnetti (news), Le Rêve américain by Anthony Marciano (article), LOL 2.0 by Lisa Azuelos, and Si tu penses du bien by Géraldine Nakache.

Does this jeopardise funding for mid-range films which fly the flag for French arthouse cinema?
We’ve studied the figures for French production investment approval this year, up until September (minority co-productions included). Out of 227 films, there are 47 with budgets of under €1m (including 27 documentaries), 86 between €1 and €4m (29 between €1m and €2m, 29 between €2 and €3m and 28 between €3m and €4m), 24 between €4 and €6m, 27 between €6m and €8m, 25 between €8m and €12m, 12 between €13m and €20m, and 5 above €20m. We thought there’d be lots of films under €4m as a result of the diversity clause and above €7 million. But as it happens, the spread is more or less even for now, despite what people are feeling.

So the house isn’t on fire in terms of French film funding?
Let’s just say the house is a little less on fire than we’d feared, although we’re seeing the beginnings of flames. It made sense to include platforms in funding systems, but it’s creating a bit of unbridled competition, in spite of volume clauses. The other issue is that Amazon and Netflix aren’t happy and they’re attacking media chronology windows. We’d be lying if we said there weren’t any problems, but for certain well-identified films and filmmakers – given the new commitment combinations, especially when Netflix invests in the second window stage - overall finance might even be far higher than it was before.