Italy-France: a round table between institutions and audiovisual professionals to discuss strategies and new opportunities

05 APRIL 2024

Following the success last January of the Parisian event De Rome à Paris – Italian Screens, offering professional meetings between Italian and French producers, distributors and sales agents, Rome is also proving to be an ideal stage for intensifying the important and fruitful collaboration between the CNC and Unifrance, the DGCA-MiC (Direction Générale du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel du Ministère de la Culture), and Cinecittà, with the collaboration of the Institut français Italia and Ambassade de France en Italie. A partnership that reflects the excellent health of co-productions between France and Italy and a year 2024 that promises to be full of new events.

The annual round table between industry professionals was held on April 3 at the Palazzo Farnese, headquarters of the French Embassy in Italy, on the occasion of the fourteenth edition of the French film festival Rendez-vous – Nuovo cinema francese. The meeting enabled Italian and French audiovisual professionals to exchange data and information, discuss measures and tools adopted by both countries, and examine challenges and define common strategies.

Martin Briens, Ambassadeur de France in Italy, welcomed the guests, reminding them that France and Italy have been each other's leading production partners for many decades. In 2023, out of 144 international co-productions made in France, 27 were with Italy: he cited, for example, Chicken for Linda! and Nanni Moretti's A Brighter Tomorrow. Lastly, he emphasized the extent to which these meetings make it possible to maintain co-productions at a very high level, with ambitious projects built on shared narratives, and with the desire of France and Italy to address a common audience.

He was joined by Daniela Elstner, Executive Director of Unifrance, and Roberto Stabile, Head of Special Projects at MiC's DGCA in Cinecittà, who introduced their respective delegations and announced upcoming events.
Stabile pointed out that this event was part of a long tradition of collaboration between France and Italy, also corresponding to a time of great cooperation at the institutional level. In fact, the MiC's DGCA works with the CNC and Unifrance to develop co-productions and increase the distribution of Italian films in France, with programmatic continuity running from Rome to Paris, from Cannes to Venice, with the aim of fostering opportunities for meetings and exchanges between professionals from both countries, and maintaining contact between the two industries throughout the year.

Daniela Elstner also recalled that Italy was the world's fourth-largest market for French cinema in 2023 (and first in 2018 and 2019), and second in terms of international co-productions.
Anatomy of a Fall (300,000 admissions in Italy), Autumn and the Black Jaguar (250,000 admissions), Jeanne du Barry (280,000 admissions), Dogman (200,000 admissions), and Sidonie in Japan (50,000 admissions) are some of the recent and eclectic successes of French cinema in Italy.

Elstner also spoke of the ever-strong French presence at the Festa del Cinema de Rome and the Venice Film Festival (with recent prestigious awards for directors Audrey Diwan, Golden Lion, and Alice Diop, Silver Lion), as well as at the country's many film festivals. She also emphasized the strong links with Cinecittà, a structure with which collaborations have multiplied over the past five years.

This year's topics ranged from cinema revival policies and strategies, to distribution methods, from production with and for platforms, to improving the quality of co-productions between Italy and France. This event is part of an increasingly close collaboration between institutions in both countries, aimed at fostering exchanges between audiovisual professionals and the development of common policies. The high number of Franco-Italian co-productions and the willingness of participants to initiate joint strategies are further proof of the closeness between France and Italy.