Reassessing the French film industry, past and present

In 2022, not a single French production made it to the top-ten domestic box office, for the first time since 1989. With the Covid-19 pandemic only intensifying pre-existing issues and the rise of streaming rapidly changing the face of global filmmaking, the status of French films both internationally and domestically is in a relatively precarious, but potentially transformative, era. To fully assess the state of the French film industry today, it is crucial to analyse not only the works being produced but also the industrial forces which underpin them and the surrounding ideological debates.