France’s National Film Board (CNC) has unveiled a new strategy to boost the profile of French movies and talent navigating the Oscar race. Unveiled during a conference on film and TV exports held at the CNC on Monday, the new strategy will see the government-back organization double the financial aid granted to campaigns. The CNC has also appointed Sébastien Cauchon as its “Academy Awards” liaison.
Under this newly created role, Cauchon will spearhead the campaign for “Minotaur.” The country has not won the international feature prize since Régis Wargnier’s “Indochine” took the honor in 1993, despite frequent nominations in that category. The exec, who recently founded the Paris-based consultancy Cinema Collectors, comes into the role fresh off the Oscar-winning campaign forn Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s “Two People Exchanging Saliva.” His other awards work includes serving as a consultant and international publicist on Mubi’s campaign for Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” as well as a longstanding collaboration with Florian Zeller that included “The Father,” which won two Oscars. Speaking at Monday’s conference, Cauchon said France has been relatively slow to embrace the kind of specialized awards strategy.
For the CNC, the broader goal is also to move beyond France’s traditional focus on the international feature category and better coordinate campaigns across directing, acting, screenplay and craft categories. This year, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Cannes Grand Prize winner “Minotaur” (Mubi) will represent France, but other films that were shortlisted by the French committee could turn up in nominations, notably Marine Atlan’s Cannes Critics Week winner “La Gradiva” (1 2 Special), Louis Clichy’s animated feature “Iron Boy” (SPC) which won a prize at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, and Antonin Baudry’s “De Gaulle” (Samuel Goldwyn Films). There’s also Lea Seydoux with two movies, “The Unknown” by Arthur Harari (Neon), and “Gentle Monster” by Marie Kreutzer (Netflix).
The CNC’s new approach will aim at pooling resources earlier in the process and work alongside U.S. distributors. That tension between France’s cultural standing and the increasingly competitive global marketplace ran through Monday’s conference, where French film and TV figures warned that the country’s international position can no longer be taken for granted. CNC president Gaëtan Bruel pointed out France remained in 2025 the third most represented country after the U.S. and U.K. in terms of content broadcast on linear TV worldwide, but the country has so far failed to achieve the same level of success on streaming platforms.
He noted the contrasting performances of countries such as Spain and South Korea, where local programming commands a much larger share of streaming consumption. But I think that strength explains why we have had less need than others to think internationally from the very beginning of projects. That is what now has to evolve, because the world has changed,” Bruel said.
UniFrance president Gilles Pélisson similarly warned that the rise of tech giants, streaming platforms and AI had fundamentally reshaped the balance of power facing European content producers. How do we continue supporting them? We probably need to think about creating new forms of support.” For Pélisson, one of the industry’s most pressing battles is over data.
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