After several years pockmarked by global events, including Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the mood at Unifrance’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema this month in Paris was festive and upbeat.
As one seller told Screen, “Buyers are not depressed”.
Gilles Renouard, head of cinema at Unifrance, summed up the general mood: “There was really a good vibe all around this year.”
“Buyers increasingly like to be comforted that they’ve made the right call in pre-buying films early, so the Rendez-Vous serves as a place where they can be reassured by seeing completed films at market screenings.”
“The market is very polarised and complicated, box office figures are down everywhere, and the more you say ‘ambitious project,’ the higher the expectation – and the asking price,” agreed Ramy Nahas, head of international sales at SND. “Pre-buying films like this is a major risk for buyers so they are anxiously awaiting first images or finished films.”
SND brought a group of around 20 buyers for a private tour of the Paris Opera House to promote its buzzy upcoming French YA film Phantom Of The Opera, which launched at last year’s EFM and is set for a September release in France. It is set in and was partly shot in the iconic venue.
Nahas described the trip as “a way to comfort distributors who audaciously pre-bought the film on just script or promo reel and celebrate our already tight partnerships, and also help them with shaping their strategies for the film’s release in their respective territories.”
Watching films in comfortable cinemas – notably the conveniently located Pathé Parnasse and 7 Parnassiens cinemas, adjacent to the event’s main venue at the Hotel Pullman Montparnasse – is also refreshing for them compared to watching screeners via links at home or while travelling.
“It was a particularly active market this year, both to prep for EFM and as a trampoline before Cannes,” said Clementine Hugot, head of sales at The Bureau Sales.
Select buyers were treated to private screenings or first images of a handful of long-anticipated should-be tentpole titles, including Pathe’s star-powered creature feature, Marsupilami, from Philippe Lacheau and SND’s animation Asterix - Kingdom Of Nubia penned by The Count Of Monte-Cristo directing duo Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere.
Alexis Cassanet, Gaumont’s executive VP of international distribution and co-productions, echoed these sentiments. “It was positive and practical to have everyone in the same place – we’ve had very affirming feedback from buyers about the entire experience.”
Buzzy films
Packed market screenings drawing positive reactions included Pascal Bonitzer’s father-daughter comedy Hugo starring Fabrice Luchini and Chiara Mastroianni (Losange Films), Guillaume Nicloux’s thriller starring Pom Klementieff and Benoit Magimel (Le Pacte), Lisa Azuelos’ Sophie Marceau-headlined sequel LOL 2.0 (Ginger & Fed), and Remi Bezancon’s detective comedy Murder In the Building starring Gilles Lellouche, Laetitia Casta and Guillaume Gallienne (SND), which is also set to close this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Jean-Paul Salome’s counterfeiter thriller The Money Maker (The Bureau Film Sales) cashed in on closing even more territories thanks in particular to its strong opening week-end numbers at the French box office (300,000 admissions) and Alice Vial’s romance You Found Me (Gaumont) was another packed screening for buyers after a solid local launch in December (now at nearly 400,000 admissions.)
The world premiere of Bertrand Usclat and Martin Darondeau’s debut feature Comedie Francaise also stole the spotlight on opening night (January 13) and drew strong interest for seller Charades
“Films about strong women taking control of their destinies in different eras were strong draws for buyers,” suggested Renouard, citing David Roux’s Mrs. starring Melanie Thierry as a woman seeking to break out of a toxic marriage and family (Lucky Number) and Jerome Bonnell’s period drama The Arrangement, about a young maid in a bourgeois home who, pregnant with the child of her abusive employer, forms a bond with his wife.
Among the buzziest market premiere screenings was Gaumont’s basketball comedy The American Dream, based on the true story of a pair of friends who end up becoming two of the biggest agents in the NBA. Directed by Anthony Marciano and starring local crowd-pleasers Raphael Quenard and Jean-Pascal Zadi, the Quad Films and Gaumont-produced film is set to hit French cinemas in mid-February.
Gaumont tells Screen it has already locked in several as-yet-undisclosed sales to multiple territories following the Rendez-Vous screening.
Petite, yet powerful
Buyers and sellers spanning both cinema and audio-visual companies were concentrated under one roof at the market, stationed in side-by-side stations where they packed in back-to-back one-on-one meetings from morning until night, barely standing up to step away from their dedicated spaces.
While crowded and action-packed, buyers and sellers said they appreciated the more intimate nature of the event, with 400 film buyers and 100 TV buyers, far less than the likes of EFM, which welcomes around 1,300 to Berlin and some 1,500 in Cannes every year, spread out all over their respective towns.
Mid-Rendez-Vous, this year’s French cinema award, held at France’s Ministry of Culture on January 15, was a convivial affair, bringing together CNC president Gaëtan Bruel, culture minister Rachida Dati, Unifrance president Gilles Pélisson and executive director Daniela Elstner to honour Cedric Klapisch for his career helping to spread French cinema around the world.
Further attendees included longtime Klapisch collaborators writer-director Santiago Amigorena and actor Zinedine Soualem and members of the young cast of his latest Cannes-premiering Colours Of Time, a local hit still in cinemas (nearly 1m admissions) that has also sold to some 70 territories for Studiocanal.
The evening also turned the spotlight on the 2026 class of Unifrance’s 10 to Watch crop of rising talents who attended their first official event of the season together.
Another highlight of this year’s edition was the second annual Unifrance Distribution Award, presented to Janus Films for its release campaign for Alain
Guiraudie’s Misericordia. Marketing manager Benjamin Crossley-Marra was in town to accept the award for Janus along with Losange Films’ head of international sales Alice Lesort, who cited the “challenging US market,” and applauded Janus Films for “bringing this crazy French dark comedy — with its mushroom picking and its naked priest — to a large American audience.
”Very few distributors would have had enough confidence to undertake such an ambitious campaign.”
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