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Rising admissions to arthouse films have emerged as the one bright spot in a challenging year so far for films at the French box office.
Admissions to all arthouse films, as classified as ‘arthouse’ by the CNC, are up 6.6% to 26 million over the first 35 weeks of the year compared to the same period in 2024, according to Comscore.
The total box-office gross for the top 20 arthouse films to date in 2025 is up by 17.9% compared to the top 20 in 2024.
The biggest arthouse titles to date are Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17, released by Warner Bros, with 1.2m admissions, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet, released by the Walt Disney Co, with just over 1m, Carine Tardieu’s The Ties That Bind Us, released by Diaphana, with 780,000 admissions and Cannes opening film Leave One Day, released by Pathe and directed by Amélie Bonnin, with 652,000 admissions
Joachim Trier’s Cannes prize winner Sentimental Value has already sold more than 316,000 tickets after just three weeks in cinemas for Memento Distribution, the most for any film from Trier in France to date and an impressive tally for an arthouse title.
“We have every reason to believe that this momentum will only get stronger,” says David Obadia, head of arthouse cinema organisation AFCAE.
There are now several buzzy arthouse films to be released in the months ahead including all of France’s shortlisted films for the best international feature Oscars race: Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident (Memento, Oct. 1), Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (ARP, Oct. 8), Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister (Ad Vitam, Oct. 22), Ugo Bienvenu’s 2D animation Arco (Diaphana, Oct. 22) and Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life (Ad Vitam, Nov. 26).
Box-office blues
Obadia frames the good news for the arthouse sector against the “gloomy context” of the bigger picture: Total admissions in France to date are down 15.1% compared to the first nine months of 2024, to just over 100 million admissions (€740m)*
This year’s biggest films – mostly US blockbusters - have failed to hit match the heights of 2024, when France was one of the few markets to see admissions increase year-on-year. Disney’s Lilo & Stitch is the top performer with 5.2m admissions, less than half the amount of last year’s leader A Little Something Extra (Pan Distribution) that managed a whopping 10.8 million.
Warner Bros’s F1 is next with 3.2m admissions, followed by Pathe’s local comedy God Save The Tuches with 3m, both far under 2024’s second and third biggest titles, The Count of Monte-Cristo (9.3m) and Disney’s Inside Out 2 (8.6m).
Should-be blockbusters including Universal’s Jurassic World: Rebirth (3m), Warner Bros’ A Minecraft Movie (2.7m), Universal’s How To Train Your Dragon (2.6m) and Paramount’s Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2.5m) have all managed solid but not spectacular results.
“In France, you need both American and French films to work. This year, both have been underperforming,” says Eric Marti, general manager of Comscore France, The problem with the French industry is that, historically, one year it’s good, the next year it’s bad and repeat,”
He estimates total admissions for 2025 will hit around 160 million, which would be a 12% decrease year on year.
“The industry is depressed,” admits Olivier Snanoudj, Warner Bros Discovery head of theatrical distribution for France and Benelux and president of the SFAC (French-American film union). “It’s better if the whole system works. We need people in cinemas, watching trailers.”
“We simply need more films to work”
The French distribution and exhibition industry is heading to Deauville on September 22 for its annual week-long conference run by national exhibitors organisation the FNCF. They will debate ways to bring audiences to cinemas, but Snanoudj says “It’s not the fault of distributors, the CNC can provide support in some urgent cases, but there’s no money anywhere. There won’t be a miracle solution. We simply need more films to work.
“The problem is not that French audiences don’t want to go to cinemas, it is that they no longer want to simply ‘go to the movies’ every week, they go to see a specific movie. They go because it is an event that everyone is talking about.”
He points to Ryan Coogler’s Sinners which sold over a million tickets following its April release and Zach Cregger’s horror title Weapons, which has taken an impressive 895,000 admissions after five weeks, as examples of buzzy films that audiences left home to watch.
Although September is typically a slow month in France, there are signs the box office may be coming back to life. Warner Bros’ The Conjuring: Last Rites sold just over a million tickets over the past weekend (Sept. 10- 14). It was followed by strong starts for Universal’s Downtown Abbey: The Grand Finale and Cannes films Oliver Laxe’s Sirât, to be released by Pyramide, and Alex Lutz’s Connemara, which Studiocanal is handling.
The weekend’s top 10 films accounted for 1.6 million ticket sales, a whopping 219% increase compared to last weekend, the largest week-on-week increase since 2021.
Local exhibitors and distributors are hoping there is now some momentum for a fourth quarter revival. Upcoming local releases for which hopes are high include Jan Kounen’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (Universal, Oct. 29) starring Jean Dujardin, Jean Valjean (Warner Bros., Nov. 19) based on the Les Miserables character, Cedric Jimenez’s Venice and TIFF title Dog 51 (Studiocanal, Oct. 15).
Potential US hits include Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio on September 24 for Warner Bros, Zootopia 2 on November 26 for Disney, and James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire & Ash on December 17, for Disney.
*based on an average ticket price of €7.40.
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