The Beautiful Impossibility of French Culture: How Contradiction Became a Superpower #1

France refuses to pick between tradition and modernity, so they just do both. Somehow it works brilliantly. Here's how contradiction became their cultural superpower.

Nov 21, 2025

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Bonne lecture
Judy

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I knew that France had a strong film history when I first started researching this article, and I thought that I’d find yet another story about an industry desperately clinging to relevance in the streaming age. Instead, I found something that makes absolutely no sense on paper but works brilliantly in practice.

France sold 181.3 million cinema tickets in 2024.[1] Not only that, they were the only country in the world where cinema attendance actually increased last year.[2] While Germany dropped 17%, Italy fell 19%, Spain declined 22%, and even the mighty United States slumped 25% below pre-pandemic levels, France just kept packing people into theatres.[3]

The question isn’t whether this is remarkable (it is). The question is: comment diable did they pull it off?

The Contradiction Strategy

Here’s where things get properly French.

While other nations agonise over whether to protect traditional culture OR embrace globalisation, France simply refuses to choose. They do both. Aggressively. Simultaneously. And they make it work through what can only be described as a magnificent lack of logical consistency.

They tax Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ at 20-25% of their French revenue and force these platforms to invest that money into French and European content.[4] But here’s the twist: they’re not trying to block these platforms. They’re making them pay for the privilege of operating in France, then using that money to fund local cinema.

C’est magnifique, non?

The streamers now pump an estimated €250-300 million annually into French audiovisual production.[5] Netflix alone has agreed to invest 4% of its French revenue directly into financing films that must first be released in cinemas.[6] The platforms gain access to the French market (9 million Netflix subscribers and counting), French producers receive funding, French cinemas are granted a 15-month exclusive window, and French culture is preserved.

Everyone wins except logical consistency, which died heroically somewhere around page three of the legislation.

When “Both/And” Beats “Either/Or”

The French approach to cultural preservation is delightfully schizophrenic. They protect their traditional café culture with the same intensity they use to fund cutting-edge streaming content. They demand that global platforms invest in French cinema, then subsidise those same French producers who work with the platforms through a dedicated €5 million CNC fund.[7]

French films captured 44.4% of the domestic market in 2024, the highest level in 15 years.[8] Three of the top five films were French: Un p’tit truc en plus (10.8 million tickets), Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (9.3 million), and L’Amour Ouf (4.7 million).[9] These weren’t just heritage films trading on nostalgia. They ranged from comedies to historical dramas to musical films, showing that French cinema can compete across every genre.

Meanwhile, French cuisine preserves AOC labels with religious fervour while French chefs innovate globally. The Festival d’Art Sacré d’Antibes showcases sacred and profane performances side by side. Parliament debates like seminars, maintaining intellectual rigour that dates back to café culture’s heyday when the Procope café opened in 1686.[10]

The pattern is clear: France doesn’t see contradiction as a problem. They see it as a feature.

The Economic Logic of Illogic

Here’s what surprised me most (and I’m no economist, so take this with a grain of fleur de sel): this messy, contradictory approach actually generates serious money.

Investment in French film production hit $1.45 billion in 2023, a 13.6% increase from the previous year.[11] The CNC’s tax credit schemes generated €2.9 billion in extra spending between 2017-2021.[12] Productions like Emily in Paris bring in millions while employing hundreds of French crew members.[13]

The system works because France has built a virtuous cycle. Cinema tickets fund the CNC through taxes. The CNC supports production. Productions create jobs (150,000 of them, 13% more than pre-COVID).[14] Those jobs support communities. Those communities buy cinema tickets. Rinse, repeat, add more wine.

But they also tax the streamers, who create content, which attracts global audiences, which makes France attractive for international productions, which creates more jobs, which... you get the idea. It’s a beautiful mess of circular economics that somehow generates billions.

The Lesson (If There Is One)

While other countries are still trying to decide whether to embrace Netflix or protect their local cinemas, France has already moved on. They’ve embraced Netflix and protected their cinemas. They’ve funded streaming content and maintained theatrical exclusivity windows. They’ve opened their market to global platforms and forced those platforms to invest in French culture.

“Five years ago, we were saying that American platforms were going to kill off French cinema,” said Olivier Henrard, the CNC’s interim president. “But on the contrary, they are trying to carve out a place for themselves in French cinema. It’s a form of revolution.”[15]

That’s the beautiful impossibility of it all. France succeeds precisely because it refuses to be consistent. They’ve turned contradiction into a competitive advantage. While other nations pick either/or, France picks both/and, and somehow makes it work.

Could other countries copy this?

Honestly, I doubt it. The French model relies on decades of institutional infrastructure, cultural confidence, and a willingness to create regulations so complex they’d make a Brussels bureaucrat weep. It’s not exactly a plug-and-play system.

But the core insight is worth stealing: maybe the choice between preserving tradition and embracing change is a false one. Maybe you don’t have to pick. Maybe the secret is having the audacity to pursue both paths simultaneously, even when they seem to contradict each other.

The French have proven that cultural protectionism doesn’t mean closing your borders. It means making sure that when global platforms enter your market, they contribute to local culture rather than simply extracting from it. It means using regulation not to block change, but to shape it. It means being comfortable with contradiction.

The secret to France’s cultural impossibility? It’s not just the system—it’s the attitude behind it. The intellectual rigor, the refusal to compromise on precision, the beautiful defiance that makes three-hour lunches more productive than Silicon Valley hustle. If you’re curious about the cultural psychology that makes this “both/and” approach possible, I explored that in (a soon-to-be-published): Maybe France Doesn’t Want You to Understand It: A Love Letter to Cultural Defiance.

Vive la différence, indeed.

Judy

Endnotes

Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), “Avec plus de 181 millions d’entrées en 2024, les salles françaises confirment la situation exceptionnelle de la France dans le paysage du cinéma mondial,” décembre 2024.
Connexion France, “France leads global cinema attendance in 2024 with strong sales,” December 31, 2024.
CNC official statistics show Germany -17%, Italy -19%, Spain -22%, US -25% compared to 2017-2019 averages.
Variety, “Netflix, Amazon Must Invest 20-25% of French Revenues in Local Content,” July 1, 2021.
Cineuropa, “Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ enter into the French funding system,” December 10, 2021.
Euronews, “How European countries are taxing Netflix to invest in cinema,” April 1, 2022.
Variety, “France to Subsidize French Content Fully Financed by Global Platforms,” November 10, 2021.
CNC statistics show French films achieved 44.4% market share in 2024, the highest since 45.5% in 2008.
CNC official box office figures for 2024.
Historical records indicate Le Procope café opened in Paris in 1686, becoming a centre for intellectual discourse.
Deadline, “Investment In Movie Production In France Jumped 13.6% To $1.45B In 2023,” March 25, 2024.
Screen Daily, “CNC ramps up bid to make France into a global production hub as tax credits boost spending,” August 1, 2023.
Screen Daily, citing Emily in Paris filming in France for 75 days with a €23m spend and 500 local crew.
Connexion France, quoting CNC interim president Olivier Henrard on employment figures.
Connexion France, December 31, 2024.

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