France Has Built an Emergency Service for Independent Cinemas and Signed Up Twenty Directors

The French government used the Lumiere Summit on Monday to unveil the International Resilience Initiative for Independent Screens, known as IRIS, an attempt to shore up the exhibition of independently financed films worldwide.

The names attached to it are the immediate story. Richard Linklater, Rebecca Zlotkowski, Jafar Panahi, Jane Campion, Pedro Almodovar, Wim Wenders, Tarik Saleh and Jia Zhang-ke have all signed on.

The international council extends further still, taking in Denis Villeneuve, Agnieszka Holland, Costa-Gavras, Jim Jarmusch, Tilda Swinton, Juliette Binoche, Vicky Krieps, Ira Sachs, Ruben Ostlund, Kaouther Ben Hania and Thomas Vinterberg.

The argument underneath it

The reasoning set out in the summit materials is more precise than most cultural policy, and it turns on one structural asymmetry.

"At the very moment audiences are rediscovering independent film, the ecosystem that brings it to them is weakening," the materials state. "Unlike film production, which can to some extent relocate, independent distribution and exhibition depend on locally rooted institutions."

That is the whole case. A production can chase a tax credit to another country. A cinema cannot move. A local distributor with relationships built over thirty years cannot be reconstituted somewhere cheaper.

And those institutions, the materials note, receive considerably less support than production does, despite being the part of the chain that actually puts a film in front of an audience.

Unlike film production, which can to some extent relocate, exhibition depends on locally rooted institutions

What IRIS is meant to do

The stated objective is to protect, strengthen and connect the cinemas, distributors and nonprofit networks that make film diversity possible, and to advance independent circulation worldwide, particularly where local operators are isolated, vulnerable or under threat.

The mechanism is the interesting part, because it is closer to a rapid response unit than to a grant programme.

The aim is a network of significant players able to intervene quickly when an independent cinema, distributor or nonprofit network is at risk, in territories where support is most needed, using emergency funding, expertise and international backing.

That is a different instrument from an annual subsidy. It assumes the threat arrives suddenly, in a specific place, and that speed matters more than volume.

The finance connection

The second focus is less dramatic and probably more consequential over time: building stronger links between filmmakers and the entities that actually fund independent work.

That means nonprofits, state commissions and private investors, which is an unusual coalition to convene deliberately. Independent finance tends to be assembled ad hoc, film by film, by people who know each other. Formalising the network is an attempt to make that less dependent on personal contacts.

France expects other countries to pledge support, and President Macron will host a gathering in New York on September 22 to take the plan further.

What France is actually doing

IRIS does not sit alone. It is part of a broader French effort to exert influence across the global film market, of which the Lumiere Summit itself is the main instrument.

That is worth stating plainly rather than treating as a criticism. France has the most developed system of cultural protection in the world, it works, and the country is now attempting to internationalise the model at a moment when the alternative is a market shaped entirely by a handful of platforms.

The signatories suggest the argument has landed. Getting Campion, Almodovar, Villeneuve, Jarmusch and Panahi onto the same council is not a routine achievement, and it is a reasonable indication that people who make independent films believe the places that show them are in trouble.