Top French and American film producers discussed the differences between France’s public funding system and the US private investment model, and how this helps decide which films to market, during a panel session held as part of the UniFrance Rendez-Vous event in New York on Saturday.
The annual French film showcase will be held March 5-15 at Film at Lincoln Center Theater. The event is sponsored by Film at Lincoln Center and France’s semi-national film commission Unifrance. Saturday’s session brought together producers of Hassan Hadi’s Iraqi feature film “The President’s Cake,” which was shortlisted for this year’s international feature film Oscar nomination. Other films include Hafsia Helge’s Little Sister, which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival, and Adam Meeks’ Union County, which was in dramatic competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Julie Billie, whose film Little Sister, directed by actor-turned-director Hafsia Helge, won Nadia Metti the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival and the César Awards, said France’s state-backed film financing system remains key to launching emerging filmmakers, allowing them to inject up to about $580,000 per project. However, the system remains a highly selective and competitive mechanism, partly due to the fact that France produces around 400 films a year.
For example, “Little Sister” proved difficult to obtain financing in France. She said the film’s theme revolves around a young Muslim woman coming out as a lesbian and struggling to reconcile her faith, but she was unable to get funding from the National Film Commission (CNC) during development.
“The Little Sister,” based on the novel by Fatima Das, may have been “too woke” for French financiers, she said. Billy, who runs Paris-based production company June Film with Naomi Denamour, was relying on European partners to complete financing.
“We actually financed half the film from Germany because we couldn’t find CNC funding and had to look elsewhere,” she said, adding that Arte France and Germany’s ZDF/Arte came on board early and helped bring the project’s budget to around $4.5 million. The project also collaborated with international sales company MK2 Films, a number of French allies, and French distributor Ad Vitam, which released the film. American distributor Strand Releasing became involved with the film after its Cannes premiere.
Still, Billie emphasized the importance of France’s film financing mechanism, which is essentially funded by a tax on movie tickets, in maintaining France’s status as one of the world’s most prolific film-producing countries.
“We are fighting well to preserve this system for funding French films, which was created after World War II and is now frequently attacked by conservative and far-right parties, because the first thing they attack is culture,” she said.
Stephanie Rausch, who premiered “Union County” at Sundance, said financing was only finalized after notable actors Will Poulter and Noah Centineo joined the project.
“Our lead financiers had actually given the project a soft pass before that. They said, ‘We like the script, but we can’t really do anything without talent,'” she recalled. “The U.S. market is incredibly talent-driven,” she said. “It’s very difficult to get financiers to take notice without a cast,” Rausch continued.
She said the key to evaluating projects for the U.S. market is determining which distributors to partner with when reading the script. “Who is the audience for this movie and who is going to buy it? Those are the factors that influence whether we make the movie or not,” she pointed out.
Rausch said there is a “small but powerful group of U.S.-based film investors,” but ultimately argued that “the world in the U.S., especially the drama world, is tough. Distributors and investors feel the genre is less risky.”
Leah Cheng Baker faced yet another funding model during the production of “The President’s Cake,” a drama set in Iraq directed by Hadi and shot entirely on location with non-professional actors.
Baker realized early in its development that the project required a different approach. “It took us a while to realize there were a lot of moving parts in our financial structure,” she said.
“We probably couldn’t proceed in the traditional way of looking for a co-financing structure,” Baker said. “So we realized we needed to embrace that risk is our brand.”
Her pitch directly reflected the unconventional elements of the film. “I told people, ‘The cast isn’t going to be in it. It’s going to be filmed in Iraq. That’s non-negotiable. There’s no guarantee of completion. We need 100 percent control,'” Baker said with a laugh.
She was able to raise funds through grants and institutional support to lower the capitalization of the project, and also received support from the Iraqi government and local partners.
“We needed to give everyone confidence that this project could be done,” Baker said.
Major support came from the Sundance Institute and the Doha Film Institute. Baker credited Sundance’s labs and programs, including the Producers Lab, Directors Lab, Screenwriters Lab and Catalyst Initiative, with helping attract investors. Hadi also participated in the Mercy Bloom Fellowship and participated in the Qumra Program in Qatar.
Baker will next be reteaming with filmmaker Jamie Duck for his second feature after Palm Trees and Power Lines, and is working on his next project with Hadi titled The Leftover Ladies.
Rausch is developing a new feature with filmmaker Theda Hamel, who directed “The Stress Position,” as well as another project with Meeks.
Meanwhile, Billy is working again with up-and-coming French directors Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Troillet of Gagarin on his next film Green Eyes, which is currently in post-production. In addition to preparing to shoot a film directed by Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarsson (“Rams”), the company is also developing plans for the first feature film by actor-turned-director Clemence Poésy.
The panel discussion was followed by the New York premiere of Little Sister and a Q&A with Meriti.
