04/11/2022 - We met with the director of the French festival, whose 23rd edition is unspooling 4 – 13 November

(© Aurélie Lamachère)

Nadia Paschetto, the director of the Arras Film Festival, which she herself co-founded with General Delegate Éric Miot, spoke to us about the 23rd edition of the event which kicked off today (read our article), as well as current trends within European cinema, the situation faced by French distributors, and cinema attendance in France.

Cineuropa: The Arras Film Festival is a hugely popular event which also offers up a form of European auteur cinema which we don’t often find on French cinema circuits. What’s your secret?
Nadia Paschetto: It’s a real balancing act, finding films which appeal to everyone and to all ages. We have to find a balance which speaks to different tastes and palates, and then find that little ingredient which binds it all together. Our golden rule is programming films which are, first and foremost, for the public, rather than pleasing ourselves as selectors. We know our public really well, but it’s continually evolving and we have to pay close attention to how films have been received in the previous year, look at what has worked and what hasn’t, and act accordingly. We move between films which might be described as popular, like our opening film Choeur de rockers or Maestro(s), and far more arthouse films. But there are key guiding threads, too: this year, for example, the theme of the family shines through in many of our films, and I know it’s a subject that our audience will like.

In terms of our European Competition, we look for unseen films which don’t have a distributor in France, and we award distribution support prizes. This year, we’ve received a huge number of films from Eastern Europe and the Balkans (Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia, Macedonia), even more so than usual. It’s actually become something of a trademark for us. We have two films by women directors (Six Weeks [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Noemi Veronika Szakonyi
film profile] by Hungary’s Noémi Veronika Szakonyi and The Happiest Man in the World [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Teona Strugar Mitevska
film profile] by Macedonia’s Teona Strugar Mitevska), societal themes, or films about working conditions, maternity or relationships with family. But we’ve also got a great historical epic in the form of Il Boemo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Petr Vaclav
film profile] by Czech’s Petr Václav, which world premiered in September in competition at San Sebastián and which was pitched at Arras Days – our development aid platform - in 2016. This kind of continuity is very important to us. In fact, last year, we presented Ukrainian director Antonio Lukich’s first feature film My Thoughts Are Silent [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] in our parallel section, and he’s coming back, in competition this time round, with Luxembourg Luxembourg [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonio Lukich
film profile].

What trends have you picked up on in the European films you’ve received?
A gap seems to be widening pretty much everywhere in Europe between polished and well produced works, and others which are finished but - and it’s not a question of talent - they’ve clearly been made under conditions which are too minimalistic and by filmmakers who take too many roles: director, screenwriter, producer, etc. Because, even if making a film might seem far simpler to do today, the results reveal a haphazard side; there’s a lack of support and sadly a lot of films aren’t good enough. The pandemic has definitely made things worse, by complicating funding (especially in certain Eastern European countries) and film sets, but my main observation is that it’s incredibly hard to do without a real producer.

The Golden Atlas and the Audience Award come with financial aid worth 12,000 and 5,000 euros for French distributors who commit to your winning films. But these distributors are weaker post-pandemic, and distribution of non-national European auteur films is often the first to suffer.
Distributors still have a lot to digest. Some of them are having to cut down dramatically on acquisitions to make up for the disappointing results recorded by the films they’d committed to based on their scripts. But even though there’s still a lot to sort out, we’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. All our distributors are doing a brilliant job at a time when things are still tricky, and the situation has actually improved since the new school year started, because people are coming back to cinemas and there’s no shortage of good films on offer, either. For our part, since we’ve unveiled our programme, we’ve noticed far greater expectations than last year. All these indicators allow us to hope that everyone is going to regain confidence and that we’re going to find a new balance, hopefully, even if it won’t be the same as it was pre-pandemic, because there’s no denying the impact platforms are having. I’m also convinced that cinemas need to offer something different to what people can already access at home with good sound and picture settings. The difference is about connection, collectiveness, liveliness, encounters, provisions, reflection. Simply programming a film for a nationwide release isn’t enough anymore. We have to give new meaning to our screenings: cinemas aren’t supermarkets where you drop a product into your trolley and head to the checkout.

Do you hope to match the record number of 50,000 viewers you attracted in 2019?
It wasn’t possible for the festival to take place in 2020, and last year we had upwards of 38,000 viewers, which was pretty good considering the conditions we were working under, with masks and health passport checks. Clearly, I hope we’ll do a lot better this year. For this year’s edition, we’ve also decided to bolster our professional Arras Days sidebar. Going forward, we’ll be organising a focus on a particular country, starting with Slovenia this year. Three Slovenian projects in development will be added to the usual works selected for the Aid Grant pitching sessions, and another two films will be presented as works in progress.

(Translated from French)