France’s Protected and Subsidised Film Industry: Is the Subsidy Scheme Living Up to Its Promises?

Abstract

France is arguably one of the systems that is most supportive of its national film and cinema industry among its European neighbours and even in the rest of the world. It includes a generous and wide-reaching subsidy programme for cinema and TV channels worth roughly two billion euros yearly across all the different types of subsidies provided. This chapter synoptically presents France’s state aid scheme and critically evaluates the efficacy of mainly direct selective subsidies for supporting film diversity and audience demand in France. We argue that the scheme’s efficacy delivers mixed results. While a complex support framework has helped building up a strong French film industry, a success which can greatly be attributed to the measures taken by the National Film Board (CNC), in which grants and public subsidies coexist with tax incentives directed at private investors, we find, however, that the subsidy scheme does not live up to its promises with regard to audience attractiveness and demand. As a result, we consider it both being too complex and expensive as well as too ineffective.