Hervé Michel: "We will reinforce our future place in the international market"

Last June, TV France International, an organization that promoted French TV series abroad, and Unifrance, an institution in charge of French cinema promotion worldwide, announced their merge. Using the historical name of UniFrance, the new association aims to promote all French audiovisual and cinematic content internationally. Señal News spoke with Hervé Michel, Vice-President of UniFrance, to describe the strengths of this new era for French content.

▸  What are the main benefits of being part of UniFrance?

"When you're bigger, you're stronger; that could be one answer. We need to be more visible if we aim to be a key player in the competitive and edgy international markets. There are many other reasons why it is wiser to have cinema and TV together. As French cinema or TV exporters, from now on, we will be on the road together, meeting buyers simultaneously, not separately, as happened so far. The recent dramatic changes in the global markets have driven us to this move. We will promote feature films and TV series together at all international festivals. Why wouldn't TV professionals take advantage of Unifrance's unique savoir-faire in this field? It would be better to offer TV and cinema catalogs together when meeting streamers to introduce French shows".

▸  What can we expect in this new era for French content?

"We are mixing two budgets into the newly created Unifrance. That will allow us to allocate more resources to promote our presence and our new productions. We expect that this new organization could soon increase our revenues and our reach all around the world".

▸  Within the new structure, there are two divisions, one for distributors and another one for producers. How will these divisions work?

"The new structure allows producers, distributors, and talents (TV and cinema) to work together to promote new shows and increase their global sales. We would also be stronger on presales and co-productions. We are sure that sharing and combining these talented professionals across all fields will reinforce our future place in the international market".

▸  Have you established any specific goals for 2021-2022?

"We want the two former teams to mingle and aggregate their creativity to satisfy our members and enlarge their international presence. The new Unifrance should be able to create new events that would allow all industry professionals to promote their talents at the markets and increase our general turnover. If we have the appropriate communication to emphasize it, we'll have achieved the first step of our endeavours".

By Romina Rodríguez