French Cinema Is Thriving at Festivals but Facing an Uphill Battle in U.S. Theaters as Distributors Navigate a Shrinking Market

French films are winning attention at festivals and awards ceremonies, but distributors say they are finding it harder to secure U.S. cinema releases and attract audiences. At a panel at the American French Film Festival, three experienced distributors described a shrinking market for independent and foreign-language films, with fewer buyers and arthouse cinemas increasingly showing Hollywood releases.

The scale of the change is reflected in box-office figures: “Amélie” earned about $33 million in the U.S. roughly 25 years ago, while the acclaimed “Anatomy of a Fall” took around $5 million. Major companies such as Neon, Netflix, Mubi, A24 and Sony Pictures Classics still compete for sought-after titles, but smaller distributors can lose promising films to deep-pocketed rivals. Even films with broader commercial appeal may receive limited theatrical exposure; “De Gaulle”, for example, is being released in selected U.S. markets alongside transactional video-on-demand.