Figure 1
Main entrance, Cannes Marché du Film, 2024.
©Claire Lebeau.
1Since the mid-2010s, companies selling international rights for “arthouse” films have had to adapt to the changing landscape of film distribution and release. From a socio-economic perspective, the term “arthouse cinema” refers to works whose value is attributed to the auteur themselves. The concept of the auteur is therefore examined in terms of the commodification, mediation, and reception of their films, in connection with a process of interpretation and preservation that involves multiple social actors (Pacouret 2025). To evoke the vision of the auteur as a source of market value, Thomas Elsaesser proposes the notion of the “global auteur” (Elsaesser 2016: 24), a figure that is the result of the increased presence of arthouse cinema in the market, and its recognition beyond national boundaries. Films in this category, which exist mainly within the legal and economic framework of independent production, fit into the machinery of globalization by relying on the distinctive power of major international festivals, within which they acquire a symbolic value capable of being transformed into economic value by the international sales agent.
2Arthouse films represented by sales agents—the most recent and most profitable fringe of global production—were traditionally showcased first in cinemas, and then via other release windows (physical video, television channels, and video on demand platforms). However, these films may now follow two other distribution strategies: direct release on streaming platforms, and simultaneous release in cinemas and on streaming (Kitsopanidou 2023; Smits 2024).
- 1 The concept of value chain [filière in French] (Creton 2020: 56) can be understood as a way to divi (...)
3Arguably, online video on demand (VoD) platforms represent a new outlet for the catalogues of sales companies, but are at the same time destabilizing their traditional business practices. For the emergence of digital players in the film and television market, and in particular the global subscription video on demand (SVoD) services, whose acquisition strategies are characterized by a high degree of opacity, has led to a decrease in revenue from the sale of international exploitation rights. The opacity of the decision-making process is the result of the intertwining of different economic models as well as content selection and distribution strategies that have not yet stabilized (Smits 2022: 54). Furthermore, the ability of digital distribution and release players to negotiate directly with all categories of rights holders has also upended the organization of the independent film value chain,1 blurring the dividing lines between the different professions involved, from developing a film to making it available to audiences.
4In this article, I examine the reconfiguration of the field of digital distribution from the perspective of arthouse film sales agents. The role of a sales agent consists of acquiring international exploitation rights to a film from an independent production company and then licensing these rights to different categories of buyers, such as distributors, broadcasters, festival programmers, and home video companies. A number of pioneering studies have laid out the foundational concepts surrounding what Baschiera and Fisher (2022: 4) call “the formative years of digital disruption,” in particular notions of informal versus formal distribution, disintermediation and availability. Such works have looked at digital distribution as a field that holds out the promise of disintermediation between creators and audiences, with the potential to democratize both the production of audiovisual content and access to this content (Iordanova & Cunningham 2012; Jenkins, Ford & Green 2013), as well as to encourage the growth of informal distribution networks (Lobato 2012). More recent work, which I would endorse, has conversely highlighted the central role played by professional networks in the creation and visibility of the films that reach online platforms, in a process of reintermediation rather than disintermediation. This process of reintermediation can be understood as a logic that involves “the re-definition of market strategies, policymaking and consumption, driven by reciprocal interaction between pre-existing stakeholders, new players (e.g. over the top [OTT] services), supranational institutions (e.g. the EU) and end-users” (Baschiera, Di Chiara & Re 2017: 14). While professional networks cannot ignore the impact of informal actors or “amateur” distributors in the circulation of films (Crisp 2015), the possibilities offered by digital technology have undoubtedly strengthened the role of professional distribution as a site of power, distinction, and gatekeeping (McDonald, Brannon Donoghue & Havens 2021). This has increased the power of the decisions made by members of professional intermediation networks to ensure that non-mainstream films are made available and visible on VoD platforms worldwide.
5New ways of coupling services and content have also disrupted both the economics of independent film, and the intermediation chain in which the sales agent occupied a clearly defined place, between the producers and local distributors. These professionals are thus having to adapt their practices to a new context, characterized by a redefinition of the division of value between goods and services, and between pipes and content (Benghozi 2022). The evolution of international sales practices must, however, be understood “within the broader transitions from old media to new media defined by ongoing negotiations between established and emerging industrial practices” (Wayne & Sienkiewicz 2023: 311), as well as by the coexistence of a digital and a physical economy (Busson, Evrard & Paris 2022). Moreover, as with other changes that have taken place in the film industry in recent years, the transformation of this profession cannot be understood as an interim phase with a clearly identified beginning and end, but should rather be seen as a long process during which a wide variety of practices accumulate (Carfantan, Daniellou & Massuet 2023: 8). Finally, these changes must also be considered in the light of the shift from a form of competition for attention based on the scarcity of supply, to one marked by an abundance of arthouse films with global potential, which has moved the focus from production to the discoverability and the visibility of titles.
6This article supplements and builds on my previous work on the profession of sales agent (Vinuela 2021). The purpose of this study is to examine the digital transformation of the film industries from the perspective of the work of international film sales agents, as a profession that plays a key role in the globalization of independent cinema but operates behind the scenes of the industry and is often confused with the profession of distributor. My analysis of the changes taking place in international film sales draws on two areas of the literature. The first of these is research into film distribution (Alexandre 2015; Allamand 2018; Lecler 2019; Mariette 2014), based on the epistemological contributions of the sociology of intermediation (Baschiera, Di Chiara & Re 2017; Jeanpierre & Roueff 2014; Lizé, Naudier & Sofio 2014) and on the concept of interdependence in the film industry as understood from a political economy perspective (Creton 2008). In line with this work, in this article I consider distribution not simply as an activity of transmission that structures the movement of content between those who make it and those who consume it, but as the product of the involvement of different professional groups whose roles are connected in a systemic logic. Additionally, this article also contributes to the field of Film Festival Studies, which for some years now has addressed the role of film festivals and film markets as legitimating bodies in a position to play a central role in the formation and stabilization of the film market, and in changes taking place within this market (Laurichesse 2018; Vogel 2023).
7I will begin by describing how international film sales are organized, and the role of this activity within the independent film industry in the context of a globalized economy, before going on to look at the repositioning of the role of sales agent as a result of the new combinations of business models, purchasing practices, and editorial policies of digital VoD platforms. I will then explore the evolution of the concrete ways in which arthouse cinema is integrated into the socio-economic space by considering the role of festivals as an essential site for constructing the value of films, but also as a site in which the tensions generated by the platformization of arthouse films can be observed.
- 2 ACM Distribution is a scheme set up by the CNC in 2015 to support and promote the international cir (...)
8From a methodological perspective, this study is based on eighteen semi-structured interviews with executives from international film sales companies based in France, conducted between 2020 and 2023. I chose to interview professionals working for companies with content libraries consisting exclusively or mainly of French and foreign arthouse films. My sample was drawn solely from independent companies that had received financial support on at least one occasion from the “Aide aux cinémas du monde-Distribution” scheme (ACM Distribution)2 to promote a film in different territories. The interview guide consisted of fifty questions on the company’s activities, the characteristics of its catalogue, career trajectories and practices within the profession, and how the activity is changing in response to the rise of digital platforms. I also interviewed the Director of European and International Affairs at the Centre national du cinéma et l’image animée (French National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image, CNC), and the coordinator of the ACM Distribution fund. To complement my analysis of the views of sales professionals, I also conducted interviews with representatives from the online platforms FestivalScope (in 2021) and Under The Milky Way (interviewed first in 2017, then in 2023). The former is an aggregator for festival programmes, and the latter develops and licenses curated content catalogues across all categories of film. I also drew on interviews with sixteen independent producers, conducted between 2018 and 2023, that shed light on the criteria they use to choose a sales company to represent their films internationally. And finally, the article also draws on my observations of the behaviour of sales agents at the Berlinale film market in 2018 and 2019, and on consultation of the trade press and institutional websites.
9The profession of film sales agent exists in the context of “independence,” a concept that, as Sophie Noël and Aurélie Pinto (2018) point out, has a very broad range of uses and meanings in the cultural and media sectors. Two conceptions of it do, however, stand out in particular: one centred on the nature of the content, and a second one—which I am using here—based on legal and economic criteria. While there is no common legal and economic definition of independent production in the film industry within Europe, not to mention in the rest of the world, a broad consensus is emerging around three criteria. First, an “independent” producer owns either all or a percentage of the rights to a film, by virtue of a contract signed with the authors. Second, in consultation with the authors, an independent producer has a degree of artistic control over the work produced by their company. And finally, an independent producer runs a company that is not owned by a broadcaster, whether a television channel or an online platform. The business model of independent production is thus based on the recourse to various sources of funding coupled with the exploitation of intellectual property rights across multiple territories and in different media, involving cultural and economic intermediaries in this process, including sales agents.
10This conception of independence, on which the international sale of arthouse films is based, must be combined with a sense among sales agents of unequivocal adherence to the values that govern what Christel Taillibert (2020) has conceptualized as “the cinephile system.” In my interviews with international sales professionals, I found their sense of self centred on a sensibility shared within this system, above and beyond qualities specific to the commercial nature of their activity. The head of a sales company thus described the ideal arthouse film sales agent as being:
[…] a film buff, someone who enjoys watching arthouse films and has an international outlook. They don’t necessarily have an extensive academic background in film studies, but they do like to share their love for films generously. They have mastered the art of the three-minute pitch and have extraordinary physical stamina and a certain gift of the gab. After all, you have to be able to attract and retain the buyer’s attention in a very short space of time. (January 2021)
11Traditionally, the transnational independent film industry involves the following stages and professions: creation (scripwriter-director); production (the producer is licensed the rights to the film in their own country and internationally); distribution (the producer licenses temporary rights to the film in their own country to a distributor); international sales (the producer licenses temporary rights to the film outside the country of production or the country of the co-production partners); distribution in the rest of the world; and finally release, which is preceded by negotiations between each local distributor and broadcasters in the territory for which the rights have been acquired. Broadcasters (television channels, home video companies, and online platforms) as well as cinema operators are therefore at the end of a supply chain in which the sales agent is positioned between the producer and the local distributors.
12As a result, once the rights have been acquired by an international sales company, films can be licensed worldwide. In the field of arthouse cinema, the price of international rights varies depending on the filmmaker’s reputation—built up in particular through selections and awards at festivals—as well as other factors such as the size of the territory in which the rights will be exploited, the duration of the licensing period, and whether or not the rights holder can make the film available via one or more media. Despite the growing popularity of digital platforms as a means of releasing independent films, traditional distributors remain the main clients of sales agents. During one interview, the director of a sales company confirmed the prevalence of distributors as intermediaries who negotiate with VoD services operating in their territory:
The availability of films on video on demand services is part of our contracts with distributors. It’s the distributor who chooses the online platform, since the platforms are often both partnering and competing with distributors. We sell the rights and the distributor then does what they want in their own country, including selling to Netflix [which usually involves exclusivity], even if it’s in our interest for the film to be available via as many windows as possible. (April 2020)
- 3 Referring to the difficulties of ensuring theatrical release for independent films, Berlin Internat (...)
13Although the business model of traditional distributors, long allies of sales agents, is mainly theatrical-driven, these professionals have been quick to build ties with local platforms, as they did in the past with cinema operators, to maximize rights exploitation across all channels. Indeed, while commercial theatrical release is still seen as the most effective launch pad for an arthouse film into the market, due to the critical and promotional apparatus surrounding this event, the scaling back of this mode of release means that more and more arthouse films are being made available on digital platforms after being screened at festivals, without the benefit of the showcase provided by cinemas.3
- 4 At the Cannes Marché du Film in May 2023, for example, Netflix bought rights solely for North Ameri (...)
- 5 Spotify, for example, offers the same music catalogue in eighty countries, and Steam offers its vid (...)
14To understand the central role played by international sales agents in tandem with local distributors in the intermediation system by which arthouse cinema reaches VoD platforms, it is important to note that, although digital technologies make it possible to offer the same content to audiences around the world, the supply of independent films is organized according to territorial criteria. For example, even though Netflix is available in virtually all countries, only original content produced by the platform itself, for which it owns all rights, is automatically available worldwide. Conversely, when Netflix acquires the rights to show a film produced by an independent company, the deal generally covers only a limited number of territories, or even just a single one.4 In comparison, music and video games are more successful examples of globalized cultural industries.5 This situation illustrates a form of continuity in the intermediation system that links producers, sales agents, and foreign distributors, based on applying the principle of geo-blocking to the circulation of audiovisual content. By protecting the territorial exclusivity of rights in both traditional and new digital media, this principle has played a crucial role in the institutionalization of the profession of sales agent, while also facilitating access to multi-national production funding as a means of ensuring diversity, as notably reflected in the abundant supply of films. However, since the European Commission announced its goal of creating a Digital Single Market across the European Union in 2015, the use of geo-blocking in the distribution and releasing of audiovisual content has become a battleground between professionals in the audiovisual sector and the Commission.
15The European Union’s aspirations to ban geo-blocking in the audiovisual sector in order to make the same content available at the same time in every country, vigorously opposed by companies and professional organizations involved in production, distribution, and sales,6 were rejected for the first time in 2018, and then again in 2023, when the European Parliament voted in favour of maintaining this principle.7 The protests that took place in 2023 gained considerable momentum at a time when the “original” productions financed by the powerful US streamers, made available worldwide, have enabled these actors to establish themselves as champions of a form of diversity perceptible through a wide and varied range of content shot in a multitude of languages and locations. This idea of diversity is very different from the vision upheld by European professionals, who see maintaining the territoriality of rights as a fundamental pillar of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the films available, as well as an essential tool for maintaining the economic structure of a sector based on the activity of a limited number of media groups and a very dense network of small-size production, distribution, and international sales companies. In fact, the tension between Brussels and audiovisual professionals in a sense reflects the difficulty of reconciling, in the digital sphere, legacy economic models and intermediation practices with those brought about by the possibilities offered by digital technology.
16I will examine the impact of this plurality of models and practices on the profession of international sales agent by observing the different trajectories of films that move from the catalogues of sales companies to those of online platforms. I use the term “trajectory” here to convey the idea of a crossing or passage between the conception and production of a film, and the point at which the film is made available on one or more VoD platforms. The type of trajectory is determined by two factors: how old the film is, and the type of online platform on which it is hosted. First, depending on how recently the titles were completed, international sales companies’ catalogues include two categories of film, each of them adopting a different approach to promotion and distribution. The first category constitutes these companies’ line-ups, which include films that premiered at a festival during the current year as well as some that are completed or not yet finished but expected to have a festival premiere. A second category in a sales agent’s library includes films of up to fifteen years old. I note that a third category of arthouse works, known as “heritage” films, is rarely represented by international sales companies because the exploitation rights for works over fifteen years old are usually returned to the production company after the licensing period. For these films, a production company then either exploits these rights directly or entrusts them to cataloguists—companies specializing in heritage cinema.
17Second, in order to establish the typology of platforms hosting arthouse films, I start by classifying them according to their business model: pay-per-view, subscription-based, or advertising-supported, even though the boundaries between these models are increasingly porous. Within each model, two distinctions need to be made: first, whether the online platform is generalist or specialist (e.g. whether it focuses on arthouse cinema, or on production from a specific geographic, linguistic, or cultural area), and second, whether it has a local or a global scope. While all digital content providers obviously need to offer a sufficient volume of attractive titles, both to capture the attention of users and to build an identity by which they can differentiate themselves from other operators (Raats & Evens 2021: 52), the pulling power of arthouse cinema is determined by the editorial positioning of each operator, and thus varies widely across the platforms that might acquire this type of cinema. Therefore, the volume of arthouse films, the proportion they represent in the platform’s catalogue, and their visibility are all dependent on the characteristics of the platform hosting them.
18I will consider the trajectories of films in the light of the commercial interactions between sales agents and, as appropriate, distributors, aggregators, or VoD platforms. The nature of these interactions results from the interplay of two factors: first, a film’s reputation and age, and second, the online platform’s business model, the size of its catalogue, its editorial positioning, and the local or transnational scope of its activity. The models resulting from these combined elements reveal an extremely fragmented digital distribution landscape, but one in which a form of continuity with the past can be observed in the relevance of the relationship between international sales companies and local distributors. On the other hand, factors such as the emergence of new intermediaries, opaque decision-making in relation to acquisitions, and the overlapping of the as-yet unstable business models of VoD services all point to change in the rationales that have traditionally governed the licensing of films to a distributor for theatrical release.
- 8 According to my interviewees, the licensing period is generally between seven and fifteen years.
19Depending on the online platform’s business model—either transactional video on demand (TVoD) platforms, or subscription video on demand (SVoD) platforms, the latter usually referred to as streamers—there are two main categories of buyers for the films represented by a sales company. These two categories include further sub-categories based on the geographic reach, financial resources, and editorial positioning of each service. It is, however, increasingly common for the same operator to make films available on both a pay-per-view and subscription basis. A title may thus join the TVoD offering after a period of SVoD release or, conversely, start out as premium content accessible on a TVoD basis before joining the catalogue available to subscribers. It should be noted that the scope of this study does not include free ad-supported online services, since these services almost exclusively purchase films from local producers, in particular heritage films, which are old enough for the rights to have reverted to the producers after the end of the licensing period.8 Similarly, I will not be looking at the ways in which films are made available on the online platforms of television channels after or at the same time as they are broadcast on television.
20I will therefore begin by focusing on how the films marketed by international sales companies reach TVoD platforms, before turning to deals made with SVoD platforms.
21Whether their scope is global or local, and whether their editorial positioning is specialist or generalist, TVoD services are the main outlet for arthouse films. This is because the depth of these operators’ libraries is a perfect fit for the abundance that characterizes the global production of such films. However, the ease with which titles can be placed on these platforms—which do not require exclusive exploitation rights—contrasts with the highly uncertain and generally low remuneration received by the sales agent, calculated on the basis of revenue sharing between the sales agent and the platform.
22Although the observation made by my interviewees regarding their low licensing fees perceived in this type of operation applies to deals with all TVoD services, films can take two different paths depending on whether the online platform in question has a local scope and a specialist catalogue (such as Universciné in France or Filmin in Spain), or is a global generalist one (such as iTunes, Google Play, or Prime Video) on which arthouse films can be found within a varied range of film and television content. In the first case, negotiations with the panoply of cinephile online platforms with a limited geographic reach continue to follow the traditional sales model, based on a close relationship between the sales agent and distributors. As such, the emergence of this new outlet does not appear to have had a major impact on the traditional intermediation process by which films used to reach cinemas or home video companies. In a sense, TVoD is in fact a replacement for the declining physical video market.
23However, the economics of international film sales have been severely impacted by the dwindling payments made by the distributors in this new context, with the sales professionals I interviewed observing a decrease in revenue from TVoD cinephile online platforms, and a longer recovery period compared with revenue from theatrical release. As a result, distributors are having to reduce the amount they pay to sales agents, who are trying to compensate for the drop in their revenue by positioning themselves further upstream within the film value chain, and acting in some ways as scouts for new filmic voices. This positioning enables sales professionals to reap the benefits of discovering talent from all over the world. Their involvement in co-production, in addition to their traditional role of licensing film rights, appears to be a solution to compensate for the decline in revenue from the sale of rights, while at the same time allowing them to forge strong links with the filmmakers represented in their catalogues. As we will see below, while investing in discovering and supporting the career of filmmakers generates value for a sales company and raises its profile, it also increases dependence on festivals, which are expected to legitimate the choices made by sales professionals.
- 9 Examples of aggregators for online video distribution include 3Vision (United Kingdom), Federal Hil (...)
24In contrast to the continuity of the intermediation logic observed in negotiations with local cinephile platforms, titles most often reach a generalist platform with an international presence via a digital distribution company responsible for aggregating film rights,9 which will typically purchase rights for several territories from content aggregators rather than dealing directly with traditional distributors. Audiovisual content aggregators have shaped their role as intermediaries based on a diversified range of functions, mainly organized around two pillars (Fontaine & Simone 2017). The first of these pillars consists of building catalogues that bring together titles from different origins and offering them to global online platforms, which prefer to acquire a slate of films rather than sign agreements with the rights holders of each individual work. The second pillar consists of encoding or processing digital files in order to deliver them to the online platforms in line with their specific technical requirements. The role of aggregators may even extend to developing marketing strategies or providing technical services, such as creating and managing audio description, subtitles, and editorial and legal metadata.
- 10 According to Lucien Karpik, the creation of the symbolic value of unique goods and its transformati (...)
25It is worth noting that audiovisual content aggregators are in contact with all categories of rights holders, including sales agents, but also distributors, producers, and even creators, who are paid on a revenue-sharing basis. Unlike traditional distributors, who negotiate each title individually—thereby highlighting the singularity underpinning the economics and imaginary of arthouse cinema—, aggregators consider their base material to be not the film, but the metadata relating to the films presented in curated catalogues. Sales agents may decide to use an aggregator because they want to give broader geographic exposure to titles that have only been acquired by distributors in certain countries, or that have not sold in any territory after having been presented at several film markets. Audiovisual content aggregators are therefore less a natural partner of sales agents than a default option, since their professional rationale, which is based on volume as an alternative to cinematographic singularities, makes aggregators more attractive to global digital distributors. There is, however, a risk of content becoming invisible as a result of this volume-based rationale, which is difficult to reconcile with the “economics of singularities” (Karpik 2010) of which arthouse cinema is a part,10 based on the capacity of distinction of festival selection and awards, and the highlighting of titles in the trade press to guide buyers’ decisions.
26In the context of selling films to subscription-based streaming platforms, there remains a distinction between cinephile and generalist platforms in terms of the professional practices of sales agents. While TVoD services pay to showcase licensed titles on a revenue-sharing basis, SVoD services pay a flat fee to acquire the rights to content for a limited period of time, which can range from one month to several years.
27As with the deals between distributors and TVoD cinephile platforms, in the licensing of rights to SVoD platforms specializing in arthouse films—most notably Mubi—we can see a form of continuity based on adherence to the values of a cosmopolitan, social and auteuristic form of cinephilia. Sales agents find that these digital platforms share the film culture of traditional distributors, including using human curation methods rather than algorithmic ones to select and recommend content, in a way that is consistent with the strategy accompanying theatrical release. However, while my interviewees recognized the ability of cinephile SVoD platforms to showcase their films within the cinephile system with which they are familiar, they were critical of the generally low payments made by these operators, mainly when these are conditioned by a rapid rotation of the titles made available to subscribers. As a result, these services, which are not yet consistently profitable, have tended to focus on buying films from sales agents’ back catalogues, or films thought to be “difficult,” as one sales professional explained during our interview:
Selling a film to Mubi brings in very little money. All the deals we’ve done with them have been for a thousand dollars to take a film for a month. For bigger films, they buy rights for a longer period and for more territories. We did a deal for the rights to a documentary that won a César award, a film that was too tough, and in the end they paid, I don’t know, two thousand dollars I think for several territories. So we rarely work with Mubi, which doesn’t pay much, other than for films that haven’t sold well, that are very difficult. (April 2020)
28Nevertheless, the development of Mubi means that this online platform is no longer merely a prestigious albeit minor outlet for arthouse films. Instead, following a diversification strategy with clear potential to shift the boundaries that previously separated different professions, Mubi has become the world’s first integrated group focused on arthouse cinema. It launched this strategy in 2022, when it bought one of the leading international sales companies in this area, Germany-based The Match Factory, along with its production arm.11 More recently, with its 2024 acquisition of the Benelux-based distributor Cinéart,12 Mubi has cemented its move from being a buyer of films to supply its offering of thirty titles updated on a daily basis—now supplemented by a vast catalogue of titles available on a TVoD basis—to becoming a company with the ability to produce, distribute, export, and release films in 195 territories,13 both online and theatrically.
- 14 Examples of “premium sales” include Amazon Studios buying rights to Ladj Li’s Les Misérables, which (...)
29The final trajectory I will describe concerns independent productions whose rights are sold to a global streamer with a generalist catalogue in which arthouse films are an additional offering. Among sales professionals these are referred to as “premium sales,” and such deals generally involve recent titles that have won a prize at a major international film festival.14 Since the late 2010s, Amazon and in particular Netflix have shown a limited but unwaning interest in buying rights to arthouse films, even though the global streamers’ film offering primarily consists of “originals.” This term is used for productions financed by the streamer, but the label “original” is also affixed to independently produced content for which the streamer has acquired exclusive rights. Within the global streamers’ catalogues, arthouse films occupy a modest place, behind the series and action films that are the flagship products for attracting new subscribers. The sale of arthouse films rights to the main SVoD actors is thus an exception within what remains a largely impenetrable acquisition strategy, as the head of one sales company explained to me:
We’re in touch with the buyers at Netflix, we show them our films and from time to time they say, “we love the film, but it’s too small for us,” or “we’re not interested,” and I don’t get it, I can’t see the logic behind what Netflix buys. I usually know the line-up of my buyers, I know the kind of films they buy, I look at the films in my line-up that I think are most like theirs and I can tell them, “that’s not for you,” or conversely, “this will interest you.” (April 2020)
30While there is often a lack of transparency regarding the amounts paid for rights, it is clear that a direct sale to Netflix or Amazon, even when the rights are acquired for a limited number of territories, is more beneficial in financial terms than selling territorial rights to multiple distributors in different countries who will then negotiate with the platforms. However, the sales agents I interviewed had mixed feelings about embracing this practice. While the potential profits might appear to dangle the promise of a new Eldorado, many sales professionals fear that the vagaries of algorithmic mediation will condemn an arthouse film to a form of invisibility, particularly if it has not had a theatrical release. Not only that, but the normalization of this practice could also turn out to be a kind of Trojan horse that will accelerate the end of geo-blocking for audiovisual content, which international sales agents firmly oppose.
- 15 Fabien Lemercier, article cited above.
31The stance of sales agents has certainly evolved since 2016, when Netflix acquired the worldwide rights (excluding France) to Divines (Houda Benyamina, 2016), which won the Caméra d’Or prize at Cannes. The rejection and concern with which this deal met in the French film industry15 have given way to increasing acceptance, albeit with some reservations, as the head of one sales company explained in an interview:
Everyone knows that a big sale to Netflix will always be more lucrative than ten or fifteen small sales to various different distributors. But that’s just one way of looking at it, it’s a decision you take with an auteur and a producer, knowing that a film will bring in more money with a single sale to Netflix, but that it won’t be released in cinemas, won’t be reviewed, and so on. It’s a very tough decision to make. It’s changed the sector, because we’re always torn between the desire to do a big deal with Netflix to cap it all off and bring in a lot of money for everyone, and trying to sell the film to distributors in several territories, which is our primary mission. (April 2020)
32While “premium sales” to global streamers in no way indicate the normalization of an acquisition policy of arthouse films by these actors, they do have the virtue of highlighting the distinctive power of film festivals. For as content shifts to online platforms, selection and awards at major international festivals are the elements that send the strongest signal to film buyers, including those who do not necessarily have a focus on arthouse cinema. The complementary relationship between festivals and sales agents can therefore be seen as a key pillar in the economics of cinematographic singularities of which international film sales are a part.
33The process by which an arthouse film accumulates value typically begins with the involvement of the sales agent in films that are either at the development stage or in some cases already finished, and considered likely to be programmed at a major international festival. As the head of a sales company explained, festivals have therefore become places where the choices made by sellers are validated, rather than places where new titles are discovered:
It’s become relatively rare to discover a film at a festival. That’s something that’s changed, it wasn’t like that when I started. A decade ago, a lot of the films shown at festivals didn’t yet have a sales agent. These days, that’s almost never the case. We tend to get involved at an earlier stage. On about sixty per cent of films we get involved at the script-writing stage, then we have a few films discovered in post-production and a few genuinely finished films, but those are the exceptions. (April 2020)
34This move by sales agents further upstream within the film value chain has been facilitated by the proliferation of mediation spaces that bring together producers promoting film projects with potential investors, such as script development workshops and co-production markets held within the festival environment. Securing the international rights to a title before it is announced as having been selected for a festival with strong distinctive power is widely seen as beneficial for a sales agent, since festival selection, and above all winning an award, increases the price a producer can command for rights from the sales company, as well as the price that the sales company is able to command from buyers in turn. As a result, with festival selection in their sights, sales agents have gradually adopted the rationales of those in charge of selecting films to be shown at festivals, the key spaces in which a film’s quality is consecrated (Thévenin 2021). These rationales are also consistent with those followed by the members of the committees responsible for awarding selective grants for film production and distribution.
- 16 In France, two striking examples of the ability of the public authorities to shape a form of arthou (...)
35As such, the convergence of the criteria used by both sales companies and festivals around an artistic canon of arthouse cinema largely shaped by the selection committees of the bodies supporting the production and circulation of these films16 is characterized by institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell 1983). This concept sheds light on the homogenization of film selection criteria across sales agents, festival programmers, and the public and institutional funders supporting arthouse cinema. This process operates through three mechanisms: the adoption of common professional norms, imitation, and coercion. Based on the theory of institutional isomorphism, the activity of sales agents and festivals can thus be said to be conditioned by the requirements of the cultural policies that regulate the industrial ecosystem of arthouse cinema. Furthermore, as an organized professional group, sales agents contribute to defining and implementing the policies that support their activity, not only as interlocutors of the public authorities and as funding recipients, but also as members of the committees responsible for selecting the projects or films that will receive financial support, as decided in accordance with the criteria governing festival selection.
36The primary task of sales agents is therefore to scour the globe for titles with selection potential, hoping to benefit from the recognition they receive within the short time span of the festival. The head of one sales company also involved in co-production set out the strategy for making a film visible at these events:
First, we need to identify the festivals at which films can be launched, make sure they are launched on the right date, in the right place, with the right press officer, with the right strategy and negotiations with the press in advance to create a buzz around the film’s world premiere and send out a strong signal to the global industry. Then, to ensure that all buyers see the film, you have to create viewing windows: there are so many films, so many festivals, so much available, that you really have to be able to create windows where the film will be seen, where it will be watched, where it will be wanted. (April 2020)
37However, the process of constructing value based on the quasi-symbiotic relationship that has developed between the companies selling arthouse films and festivals is being challenged by the growing influence of these events in the world of independent cinema.17 In particular, the way in which festivals have rethought their relationship with audiences since the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 has enabled them to considerably increase their influence. After being forced to cancel festivals and professional meetings in their physical form, organizers have learned their lesson, and many events have responded by making all or part of their programmes available in the digital sphere (De Valck & Damiens 2023). To this end, festivals have either developed their own online platforms or struck up partnerships with established operators (Taillibert & Vinuela 2021), strengthening their central role in a cultural and industrial system in which online streamers, at one end of the value chain, have now moved closer to film festivals.
38The concept of “festivals operating year-round” now being discussed in professional circles18 illustrates how digital technology can serve the ambitions of the many events that want to grow their presence in the intermediation system of independent cinema. However, these moves by festivals positioned in both the physical and digital spheres to extend the screening of selected films to year-round availability on their own VoD services have caused tensions among international sales agents, who are faced with the consequences of festivals having grasped the rapid shift to audiovisual content platformization, and the new consumer practices that are emerging as a result. Sales agents see this extension of the geographic and temporal boundaries of festivals as a destabilizing factor that is liable to blur the dividing lines between two highly complementary activities.
39In a clear sign of the tensions between sales companies and festivals, but also in an attempt to find solutions, two professional organizations have produced a memorandum of understanding explicitly entitled “To Improve Relations Between Sales Agents & Festivals.”19 Two stumbling blocks raised in this document are particularly interesting, as they point to the unstable nature of the dividing line between the parties to the memorandum. The first of these concerns the persistent confusion between the rights sold by the sales agent to the festival for physical and online screenings. The sales professionals argue that these are different kinds of rights, and call for the conditions for online screenings to be clearly specified in the agreements signed with festivals, including clauses regarding the permitted number of users and views, and the security measures adopted by the festival, particularly those relating to geo-blocking.
- 20 Non-theatrical screenings do not require a screening licence (Art. L. 214-9 of the French Film and (...)
40Second, while the memorandum posits that festivals are responsible for showing some of the films in their programme in non-theatrical screenings,20 sales agents are concerned about the development of traditional distribution activities and VoD services by festivals, and call for a guaranteed minimum payment from events pursuing such activities. As a result, while the creation of value in arthouse cinema is increasingly dependent on the prescriptive power of the major festivals, the various types of partnership that have developed between festivals and online platforms are destabilizing the model that previously governed the functioning of the independent film market.
41The profession of sales agent thus appears to be facing competition from both digital rights aggregators and festivals, whose activities are merging, coming closer together, or becoming increasingly compatible with a reorganization of practices around the idea of “infomediation.” This activity, positioned somewhere between publishing and content provision, has been defined as “linking specific needs and relevant resources within large amounts of heterogeneous data [by offering] an additional service providing content and links, drawn from a selection presented in a curated form” (Rebillard & Smyrnaios 2010: 167). Indeed, if we apply this concept to the international circulation of arthouse films, we can see that festivals and aggregators are now in a position to fulfil this role more easily than traditional sales companies. Given their unfavourable balance of power with these other digital distribution actors, sales agents are thus seeking to move further upstream in the value chain, so as to put them in a better position to discover titles and new talent on a background of increased co-dependence with the major international film festivals. For while festival selection is expected to validate the gamble that sales professionals make by investing in a film, their choices can be in turn a useful initial filter for selection managers seeking out new films to be premiered at their festival. Strengthening their role as scouts, and their editorial function, is thus enabling sales agents to remain a fundamental link in the independent film industry in the era of content platformization.
42The rise of VoD platforms as a site for screening arthouse films, and the post-COVID repositioning of festivals as economic intermediaries, have shifted the dividing lines that structure the international circulation of independent cinema. In this context, the profession of international film sales agent has been forced to adapt to a new configuration shaped by a combination of the economic, geographic, and editorial positioning adopted by the various categories of platforms. This new configuration is having an impact on the economics of licensing arthouse films across the board, and has the potential to bring about changes of varying depth in the intermediation system on which the international circulation of films is based. As such, the proliferation of business and editorial practices underpinning the activity of online platforms—whether global or local, specialist or generalist, and based on a pay-per-view or subscription model—and the possible combinations of these practices, are the primary factor of destabilization in the industry.
43At the midpoint of the 2020s, there is no single route between the catalogues of sales companies and the offerings of online platforms. Instead, I have identified three possible trajectories based on the destination of the film and depending on whether the title comes to an online platform through a distributor, directly from the sales company or via a digital rights aggregator. As films shift towards online services, the prevalence of the professional relationships established between sales agents and distributors reflects a form of continuity in professional sales rationales. At the same time, the emergence of digital platforms has disrupted the economics of exporting independent cinema. At the time of writing in 2025, the new market for arthouse cinema, which is dominated by TVoD platforms, thus brings in much lower revenues for sales companies than those previously generated by the theatrical or physical video markets, which my interviewees considered to be more reliable, transparent, and sustainable. This is compounded by the fact that films now tend to have shorter theatrical release windows, in parallel with the development of initiatives that have brought cinemas and digital operators closer together, with films sometimes released simultaneously in cinemas and on streaming. Amid the accelerating shift of arthouse cinema to online platforms, the sales professionals that I interviewed reported that the revenue-sharing model used by TVoD platforms provides a less certain income spread over a longer period of time than the revenue generated by theatrical release.
44Moreover, the intervention of aggregators in the journey of a title towards a platform is disrupting not only the economics of international sales, but also the intermediation system underpinning this activity. And finally, while signing a deal with a global streamer is the most likely way to generate substantial profits for the sales agent, it is also the most uncertain and opaque way in which arthouse films are acquired.
45The increase in outlets for independent films generated by the arrival of online platforms in the film and television market therefore does not appear to have strengthened the position of sales agents. On the contrary, this profession now faces competition from both digital rights aggregators and film festivals, whose professional rationales have rapidly adapted to the technical requirements and editorial policies of VoD platforms.