🎥 Newsletter Unifrance

I join the President, Gilles Pélisson, and the entire Unifrance team in wishing you all the best for 2024.

It's a very busy time for Unifrance, with events such as the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris, the New York Rendez-Vous in February and, in March, the French Film Festival in Japan – which has shifted its dates – as well as all the international festivals and markets that open the year, such as FIPADOC, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Berlinale, and KIDSCREEN. And let's not forget the announcement of the 10 to Watch 2024 on January 18, and the launch of MyFrenchFilmFestival 2024 on the 19th, an event eagerly awaited by the festival's fans around the world.

Next Tuesday, January 16, at the Export Day morning session, we'll be revealing the worldwide box office figures for French cinema in 2023. Your films did better than in 2022, across all genres: dramas, comedies, documentaries, animation, and genre films. Last year's success is a testament to the excellence of French cinema, based on the incredible range of its artistic range across all genres, a plurality that has no equal elsewhere!

At Unifrance, we are committed to accompanying French cinema and audiovisual productions, in all their diversity, as they travel beyond our borders. Over the past month, we have increased our communication channels and strengthened our editorial policy, to amplify our ability to speak, on behalf of the professions brought together in our organization – artists, scriptwriters, composers, directors, to name but a few – to our international audience and broaden the reach of French productions.

Each film, each audiovisual work has its own path, its own history. These peculiarities make our day-to-day work rich and infinitely varied. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Unifrance teams for their hard work and dedication on a daily basis, enabling the organization to remain agile, adapting to change while preserving our values, and guaranteeing the necessary internal and external stability. It can be a little tiring, but above all it's exciting. Let's all continue to work together to the best of our ability for this fine company.

And as nothing would be possible without our members, I would like to thank in particular those who are particularly committed to our commissions and the executive and management committees. At the start of this new year, I must remind you that membership fees are essential to the smooth running of our organization, so we're counting on you!

Now it's time for the films and works presented at the Rendez-Vous 2024. We'll be seeing and listening to many of the creators and artists who will be making their mark over the coming months. They'll be the international stars of the year to come!

Happy New Year to you all!

Daniela Elstner, Executive Director of Unifrance