Every year, French animated films, in all their forms, light up international screens. Over the years, Unifrance has developed an array of indicators to measure their distribution and audience.
Despite releases heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic, French animation maintained a prominent place on international screens in 2020 with 16% of international admissions for French films, up from the 10% of admissions it has generated on average since 2011.
Another complementary indicator is the presence of French films on SVOD platforms around the world. As of April 2021, according to data from Ampere Analysis: animated films represent 4.2% of French films on SVOD platforms worldwide (excluding France). North America is the geographic area with the highest proportion of animated works among French films on platforms, with 5.6%, followed by Western Europe with 5%. As far as global platforms are concerned, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix have the highest proportion of animation among the French films they offer, with 6.1% for Amazon and 5.9% for Netflix respectively.
While waiting for the publication in September of the 2020 report on the international sales of short films (animation represented the leading genre in exports in 2019), we can already announce the excellent festival career of our production, with 816 selections of 340 short films in 81 foreign festivals partnered with UniFrance in 2020. 59 films have received at least one award/special mention; together they have garnered 95.
Lastly, this year, UniFrance is publishing a new summary of the international results of animated films over the last 25 years (1995-2019): French animation represents 95 films distributed abroad and 74.4 million admissions, with shares amounting to 3.1% and 6.2% of the total films released and audience respectively.
Almost all French animated films are released in international territories where they generate about 10% more admissions than in France, making the genre's share is 1.3 times higher. On average each year, 16 animated films are released internationally (which proves that animation benefits from long runs) and generate 3 million admissions.
Western Europe is the first export zone for French animation and is the source of 1 in 3 admissions. If we include the Central and Eastern regions (1 in 5 admissions), the continent accounts for more than half of all admissions. If we analyze foreign territories according to the share of animation among the admissions generated by French films, Latvia is the leader with 21.7%, followed closely by Croatia (20.5%).
Nevertheless, it is in China that French animation generates the largest number of foreign viewers with nearly 8 million admissions between 1995 and 2019, followed by the United States with 7.2 million.
Find the complete analysis of the performance of French animated films internationally between 1995 and 2019, as well as a snapshot of the presence of French animated films on SVOD platforms around the world (only available in French), at the end of the article.
