France’s Champs-Elysees Film Festival Shutters After 14 Editions
The Champs-Elysees Film Festival, created by distributor-exhibitor Sophie Dulac in 2012 to build a bridge between French and American film industries and cultures , is shuttering after 14 editions.
Dulac’s decision to end the festival comes on the heels of a tumultuous 14th edition which ran June 17-23 and saw the 10 members of its two main juries (notably filmmaker Alice Winocour) stepping down in reaction to a pair of investigative articles published in Le Monde and Liberation reporting toxic management over at Sophie Dulac’s companies. Dulac has denied the accusations.
The festival has also faced a crisis in recent years due to the successive closure of movie theaters alongside the famed Champs Elysée Avenue and rising competition from other fests such as Deauville, which are courting French and American talent and movies.
In a statement sent out on Wednesday, Sophie Dulac said, “It is with great emotion that I announce the end of the Champs-Élysées Film Festival after 14 years of promoting independent French and American filmmaking.”
“The festival – and the team behind it – was brutally exposed by damning press articles published a few days before it was due to open,” Dulac said. “The festival stood firm until the end, despite the attacks and the serious consequences for its organisation. Added to this were the gradual closure of cinemas on the Champs-Élysées and a lack of financial support.”
Dulac, who is the grand-daughter of Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, a Jewish resistant during WW2 and founder of Publicis, the advertising and communications powerhouse, has become one of the most important – and a rare — distributor of Israeli and Palestinian films in France over the last twenty years, in addition to independent films from all over the world. She notably distributed “The Band’s Visit” directed by Eran Kolirin, as well as “Gaza mon amour,” and this year’s timely “Once upon a time in Gaza,” both of which are directed by Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser.
In spite of difficulties at the Champs Elysées Film Festival, Dulac was able to lure prestigious guests at the event over the years, notably Keanu Reeves, Donald Sutherland, Agnès Varda, Brady Corbet, Ari Aster, Lily Gladstone, Joel Edgerton, Ira Sachs and Ben Winshaw.
