The interview we collected with Benoît Magimel would bring a smile – and a little hope – to a dying person. And that’s a good thing, because French cinema described itself as moribund just a month ago, when an informal group of industry figures, mostly from the independent world, rang the alarm bell about the industry’s earthquake. Closed during the first months of the pandemic and then subjected to severe restrictions (masks, distances, etc…), the spaces never really managed to regain their pre-Covid levels, viewers quickly get used to browsing the platforms without having to go outside. This raised the specter of the end of a certain French peculiarity and the beginning of an Americanization of daily cinema practice, as the United States had lost many of its theaters to Netflix and other Disney+.
Is that the excitement of the industry when the culture minister splits with a rather hilarious video, imploring the general public to find their way back to the cinema? The approaching winter that makes you rush into a dark room? The quality of the offer? With more than 14 million viewers, the cinemas recorded their best value since the beginning of the year in October. And, second good news, it’s not the big-budget sketches that are popular, but movies about: Feminicides in the night of 12 by Dominik Moll, who is approaching 500,000 visitors, is also attacking See Paris again by Alice Winocour (516,000 visitors) and November by Cédric Jimenez (which is a hit with 1.6 million views) or the fate of Simone Veil in Simone, the journey of the century by Olivier Dahan (1.4 million views). Even an author’s film like l’innocent by Louis Garrel reaches nearly 600,000 visitors. Diversity, surprise, that’s undoubtedly the secret. And also “freedom” as asserted and embodied by Benoît Magimel, an actor who despite 65 films to his credit (at only 48 years old) still surprises.
