The National Center for Cinema and Animated Images (CNC) has been in its eighties since Sunday. “It is an administration which collects taxes, distributes, grants aid and draws up regulatory texts,” Gaëtan Bruel, the president of the public establishment, reminded the Cinémathèque française on Wednesday October 28 at the end of the three-day conference organized to celebrate its 80th anniversary. However, his story “concerns all French people”.
“Without our network of cinemas, the densest and most diverse in the world, entire sections of the national territory – rural areas, medium-sized towns – would be culturally devastated, because the cinema is very often the only cultural facility that remains, with the media library. Without our creators and our industry, which produce French works, for all tastes, it is our imaginations, and those of our children, which would be entirely colonized by stories from elsewhere.”
Since its creation, the CNC has always been the subject of strong criticism and debate, in particular on its autonomy, its commissions, accused of being among itself or, recently, of financing "militant" films... The idea here is not to take stock of eighty years of life, but to return to its essence and its functioning. What are the missions, the philosophy that governs its action, the resources and the results of the CNC?
1 Support for all forms of the animated image
Created by the law of October 25, 1946, and placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture since 1959, the CNC today deploys State policy in the fields of cinema, audiovisual production, video, new media and video games. Throughout its eight decades of existence, it has ended up contributing, in one way or another, to everything that is projected on a screen not only in France, but also abroad, from the cinema screen to laptops and consoles including the small skylight.
The scope of the CNC, which became the National Center for Cinema and Animated Images with the order of July 24, 2009, has continued to expand over the years. From 1986, it supported audiovisual programs – fiction, animation, documentary, music video and recording of live shows. Aid for video publishing will arrive from 1994. About a decade later, in 2003, it is the turn of video games to enter the scope of the CNC. In 2025, 772.4 million euros were paid in the form of aid to cinema and the audiovisual sector. They were also used to supply “transversal systems” where we find, for example, support for video games.
2 A tool of cultural resistance
Originally, in 1946, the National Cinematography Center was "designed above all as an instrument for regulating and controlling the cinema industry", explained cinema historian Guillaume Vernet to the Senate during the first day of the conference on Monday October 26. However, from 1948, it became a tool of cultural resistance against the surge of American films in French cinemas.
Two years earlier, on May 28, 1946, the Blum-Byrnes agreements were signed between the United States and France to finance the reconstruction of the latter after the Second World War. They include a cinema component which concerns "the marketing of new American films in France, which had not been exploited during the Occupation", indicates Guillaume Vernet. Very quickly, French films will suffer. “National production [gives up], during the first year of this new regime, at least 25% of its domestic revenues compared to pre-war (...) almost exclusively to American cinema (50%) which [doubles] its market share.”
In 1948, "the mobilization and political discussions initiated to respond [to the invasion of French screens] resulted in the signing of a new Franco-American agreement and the passing of the first law to aid the film industry." It will be renewed in 1959. The CNC was the "tool" to adapt film production "to the new international political and economic context through support for production and exploitation as well as co-production agreements, explicitly designed to resist Hollywood", summarizes Guillaume Vernet to franceinfo Culture.
3 A model of public support born under Vichy
Historian Guillaume Vernet recalls that it was “Vichy which laid the foundations of French cinema policy”. And to specify: "State support for quality films was born under Vichy, from pre-war debates, but also from Italian and German fascist models, in order to make possible, in the material context of the Occupation, films responsible for proving the quality of the new France." This is how Evening Visitors and Children of Paradise were produced.
In short, this model of public intervention is due, among other things, to "political voluntarism" and "to the consensus of the extreme left to the extreme right, regarding the necessary regulation of relations between cinema and the market and the need to maintain, for political and cultural reasons, control over this means of expression", further analyzes Guillaume Vernet. A consensus, the end of which was underlined by the Minister of Culture Catherine Pgard, at the opening of the conference, notes the historian. “Today, this historic consensus no longer brings together the entire political class,” she declared on October 26. “The model which is that of the CNC is the subject of criticism” linked in particular to “an imperfect knowledge of its functioning” and “a more fundamental questioning of the cultural policy that it embodies”.
4 An instrument of “cultural exception”
At the heart of this French model is, according to Guillaume Vernet who cites the filmmaker and activist Jean Grémillon, the defense of "the freedom to make and see films which are 'something other' than objects". France reiterated this philosophy during the negotiations on the international free trade agreements of the GATT in 1993 and had it adopted in the European Parliament.
“The cultural value of cultural goods had to come before their economic value,” recalled former Minister of Culture Jacques Toubon during the conference, at the forefront of these talks. The CNC thus constitutes for Guillaume Vernet "the cornerstone of this political model" which has been subject to "permanent American pressures since the 1920s" and which reached "their climax in 1947, then at the beginning of the 1990s".
5 A fund nourished by spectators
The CNC's support fund, which amounted to 877.5 million euros in 2025, is funded by four taxes: the tax on cinema admissions (TSA), that on publishers of television services, on distributors of television services and taxes on video. In 2025, French cinema recorded 156.2 million admissions and the tax collected on tickets made it possible to raise 123.6 million euros.
At the cinema, "10.72% of the price of your ticket is donated by the operator to a common fund called the Support Fund and with this money, the CNC will fund the advance on receipts, various aids for the script, among other things, a personal account per theater from which the exhibitors will be able to draw by presenting invoices for improvement of work or creation of theaters", explains to franceinfo Culture Richard Patry, the boss of the National Federation of French Cinemas (FNCF).
“Those who finance French cinema are those who watch it,” summarizes Sylvain Desclous, co-president of the Society of Directors (SRF). The CNC's "brilliant idea" was to "ensure that the films released in theaters contribute to helping those who are in the process of writing, rewriting or producing". The structure is at the center of a "virtuous model" in the animated image sector which allows the State, underlined on October 28 by Gaëtan Bruel, "to make a major structural saving by letting the sector finance its own support".
6 A mechanism that brings out talents
In 1959, the establishment of the advance on receipts by André Malraux's Ministry of Cultural Affairs constituted a turning point for the emergence of young talents. “I was helped by the CNC for my first short films. I received the advance on receipts twice and it is thanks to this advance that my films were able to be made, remembers Sylvain Desclous, co-president of the SRF.
“The CNC allows the industry to exist and supports creation,” adds the director of the Victoria System, “but above all it creates the conditions for the emergence and renewal of talent. If French cinema is so vibrant, like French football, it is because this institution has also been able to detect and help talent from their first short film, and then in the transition to their first feature film. For filmmakers, knowing that this tool exists is extremely reassuring, including for generations to come. come.”
7 The cornerstone of a solidarity system
“We have a mutualist and redistributive system: the big ones recover less than the small ones,” assures the boss of the FNCF, giving the example of the theaters and the sector that he knows best. "The money is collected globally and is then distributed by the CNC. The smaller you are, the more opportunity you have to recover money." The same goes for films. "A small film will be able to be financed better with the CNC than a big film. All this is completely normal, fair. The important thing is solidarity between small and large, between exhibitors, distributors, producers, technical industries and talents. This solidarity is the heart of the CNC: it pools and unites the entire profession."
Which does not prevent tensions, notes Richard Patry, but "in the CNC house, we are all together to defend a certain vision of what cinema is and all aware that our sector can only exist if there is this system". As proof: “We are the only country in the world which has reopened our entire fleet of cinemas, insists the boss of the FNCF. There is not a cinema in France which has disappeared due to the Covid crisis while a third has disappeared in the United States.” France has “2,300 cinema establishments for around 6,400 screens”.
8 An efficient structure, but criticized
“The French political model in terms of cinema is distinguished first of all by its results”, analyzes Guillaume Vernet. “It allowed France to remain a country of film production, which was certainly not self-evident after the Second World War.” The original objective, that of resisting the hegemony of American cinema on French screens, is a reality. In 2025, indicates the latest CNC report, the market share of French films was 37.9% compared to 34.9% for American films.
“French cinema is the third largest film industry in the world, affirms Sylvain Desclous. If French cinema is one of the most renowned in the world artistically – it is often selected in festivals and obtains awards –, if French cinema has one of the best market shares on its national market compared to all other European countries, if French cinema employs so many people, it is because there is an ecosystem which works very well. It is an extraordinary tool which is not perfect, continues the filmmaker, but he does not deserve the ideological or dishonest criticisms addressed by part of the political spectrum and in particular the extreme right."
“In this election period that we are about to arrive at,” argues Richard Patry, “the entire political class – we don’t do politics and we’re not here for that – must understand to what extent the CNC is a precious asset, that it is the heart of a unique model in the world. To attack this model would be to take the risk of seeing a whole section of cinephilia and the French film industry disappear.”
9 Expertise that is exported
While it is the subject of attacks in France, the Lumière Summit, organized at the beginning of September in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, seems to have virtually included the CNC in the heritage of world cinema. In addition to being its inventor, France stands out as the country that knows how to keep the 7th art alive and which already does so through co-production.
“A lot of people envy us because our model is self-financing. It doesn’t cost taxpayers money while being a public model,” adds Richard Patry. “As president of the Federation of French Cinemas,” he continues, “I travel precisely to present this French model.” And the interest is palpable “at each meeting where we begin to explain how the support account works, how this system allows the emergence of young talents, diversity and the maintenance of a number of rooms”.
The meeting in Saint-Paul-de-Vence around animated images, which brought together all its main players, was the site of a multitude of announcements. Among them, the establishment of the Lumière alliance, “the first global network of national institutions responsible for the cinema and audiovisual sector” in which the expertise of the CNC appears essential. The first meeting of the alliance will take place in May 2027, in Cannes.
10 A valid ambition “as long as the screens light up”
The history of the CNC is far from "being a long, quiet river", the many speakers at the public establishment's anniversary conference continued to insist. Its record is not perfect: Gaëtan Bruel, the president of the CNC, recalled that the institution had, for example, missed the video on demand event. Today, a new challenge faces the “triumph of social platforms”. “In this context,” declared Gaëtan Bruel, “we must assume that we have a global vision for the integration of these platforms into the French model.”
One sentence sets the tone for the rest of the CNC's life and rings like a promise. We hear it in the short film produced for her 80th birthday and narrated by actress, director, screenwriter and producer Agnès Jaoui: "As long as there are screens that light up, stories that engage and spectators that hold their breath, the CNC will be there and the story will continue."
