Busy year for French cinema. The number of French films produced started to rise again in 2023, returning to its levels before the health crisis, but the share of female directors recorded a slight decline, according to the report published Monday by the National Cinema Center (CNC). In total, the number of films increased by 3.8% with 298 films approved over the year by the CNC, according to its annual production report.
After a downturn due to Covid-19 in 2020, then a catch-up the following year, film production returned to the levels reached before the health crisis. The share of female directors remains a very small minority and has even declined over one year: the filmmakers produced are 71.7% men and 28.3% women in 2023 compared to respectively 69.2% and 30.7% in 2022, a level record. Despite everything, parity is progressing in the long term and the share of women directors of feature films “remains in the high range of the last ten years”, according to this report. They were only 17.5% female directors twenty years ago and 20.8% ten years ago.
Investments on the rise
On the financial side, investments are up sharply, for an average budget of 4.78 million euros. The three biggest French films of the year were all directed by men: “The Count of Monte Cristo”, by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière, with Pierre Niney in the role of Alexandre Dumas’ hero (42 .9 million euros budget), a two-part biopic on Charles de Gaulle, by Antonin Baudry (more than 37 million euros per part), and “l’Amour ouf” by Gilles Lellouche, with the duo Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil (35.7 million euros).