French Film Exports Grossed $104M In 2021; China Became Top Consumer
deadline.comFrench film exports generated 91.4M euros ($103.6M) in 2021, a 5.5% increase on the previous year’s provisional figures, while admissions were up 8% to 14.8M.
Comparatively, French films within France sold 39.2M tickets during the year. The figures were announced during the annual Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema which is taking place in Paris this week — one of the rare international gatherings in the current landscape that’s being held as a physical event.
Today’s numbers are provisional estimates and will be higher when they are trued up in the fall. For example, when originally announced in January 2021, the 2020 receipts were 86.6M euros, ultimately jumping to 101.7M euros when recalculated in November; a decline of over 60% versus 2019.Interestingly, China in 2021 overtook Russia to become the leading overseas market for French titles in terms of admissions, partly owing to the fact that its cinemas recovered more quickly from Covid than elsewhere.
Over 2.2M tickets to French films were sold in the market, a 908% increase on 2020 and good for 10.6M euros ($12M). Of that, over $4M went to Florian Zeller’s Oscar winning The Father, a minority French production, which released in June.
Read more on deadline.com