Public Initiatives Spur Boom In French Animation
Ben Croll Accounting for 40% of all selected projects, French productions will dominate this year’s Toulouse-set Cartoon Forum for reasons that far exceed home field advantage. Underpinning the 33 projects presented at this year’s pitch sessions as well as the relatively robust state of the Gallic animation ecosystem – which produced 295 hours of content in 2020 while increasing foreign investment by nearly 10% since 2018 – are a number of structural benefits and policy reforms meant to directly spur such outcomes.“We’ve seen the conjunction of several factors,” says Sarah Hemar, executive director of TV France International, which recently merged with film promotional body UniFrance.