Serge Toubiana, UniFrance president, and Isabelle Giordano, our executive director, have received, on behalf of the association, the first Dermagne Prize for Advancing the Profile of France, a new award created by the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale (Society for the Encouragement of National Industry).
Presented by Olivier Mousson, president of the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale, at a ceremony held at the Hôtel de l'Industrie in Paris in the presence of former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, this prize acknowledges the contribution made by UniFrance to enhancing the profile of French cinema around the world and the work undertaken by the association since it was founded in 1949 in order to to increase the visibility of French films and artists and to support the French film industry beyond national borders. The presentation of this prize provides an opportunity to highlight the figures for 2017, in which 642 French feature films were released on movie screens outside France, with 80.5 million people around the world buying movie tickets to see French productions, which generated €468 million in box office revenues in international theaters. In January this year, MyFrenchFilmFestival, the online French Film Festival created by UniFrance—a pioneering initiative for the distribution of film content on the internet—registered over 12 million views of its 2018 film selection, which was presented to viewers on a record 50 VOD partner platforms around the world.