We will talk about finances, a complicated subject according to the president: “In 2025, I experienced for the first time a public service delegation negotiation, with significant impacts on our budget, since the previous municipality lowered our subsidy, which is increased from 50,000 to 30,000 euros. So, we had to adapt and perhaps provide other sources of financing. We immediately went to the new municipality to ask that the errors that had already been made be rectified, including an immediate reduction from 2026. »
“Under pressure from distributors, a single film can sometimes take up a lot of space in our programming”
Is a change possible with the new elected officials? “There can always be amendments,” explains Pierre Dupont, director of Montreurs and also 1is deputy (Marie-Ange Castelli affirms that we know how to distinguish between political and internal functions at Montreurs). “We will perhaps have the answer during the AGM,” hopes the president.
Hunt for fake news
But we know here that the trend in cultural subsidies is downward everywhere at the national level, and that we already have to think about how to complete a budget of 500,000 euros. We think about the number of screenings, because it is clearly on the ticket that French cinema is financed. And Pierre Dupont attacks the disseminators of fake news according to which the National Cinema Center (CNC) is financed by taxes: “French cinema is not financed by public money but by the public’s money.” In any case, there is no question of increasing prices, already higher than the average for arthouse cinemas, because here we want to share the seventh art with as many people as possible. We are thinking, on the other hand, of being more aggressive in renting rooms for various events.”
And in terms of attendance, Les Montreurs d’Images achieved 59,000 admissions in 2025, or +7%, going against the national figures (-15%), and this despite a drop in school admissions which went from 14%. 000 to 12,000 (“the establishments have seen their resources drop”, according to Pierre Dupont), and are going towards the 1,900 subscribers. A nice anomaly that we attribute to the opening of a third theater which made it possible to produce 30% more screenings and to screen 500 films. “It’s about as much as a five-screen cinema. Here too, we have to think about our programming: should we continue to broadcast as many films or find another strategy?,” asks the president.
“But we will always have the same quality requirements,” she continues, “this is something on which we will not compromise. This is also the requirement of the CNC labels which are a point of reference for us and which give meaning to our work. We are 90-95% arthouse cinema, and it will stay that way.”
A daily struggle
And are Les Montreurs experiencing this growing problem with certain distributors, who demand premieres on new films? “Despite all our desires, we are often very constrained by the distributors themselves,” assures the president. To give us access to a copy of a film, they have a requirement for the number of screenings which means that a single film can sometimes take up a lot of space in our programming. It’s a daily fight that we wage to be able to continue to offer diversity.” Which does not prevent the cinema from currently offering films screened at Cannes, such as “Autofiction”, by Pedro Almodovar.
“It’s not us who take audiences from the big distributors: habits have changed, we go to see films on platforms, on our phones. It is absolutely not the small and medium-sized operation that attracts spectators from the large ones,” assures Pierre Dupont. “There is also the problem of a concentration of production,” he adds. The fact that someone who is promoting the extreme right [Bolloré via le groupe Canal+, NDLR] has control over this production is worrying.”
