First Assessment – 47th Cinéma du réel – March 2025
The 47th edition of Cinéma du réel recorded a total of 18,080 viewers who attended 141 screenings over the eight days of the festival. The average number of spectators per screening was 128. This year we programmed 118 different films and projects, including 37 films in competition.
As a reminder, in 2024 the festival recorded a total of 24,018 viewers who attended 187 screenings over the ten days of the festival. Attendance had been steadily increasing since 2022 and had therefore reached the same level as in 2019, the pre-Covid reference year. This year, attendance was down 24% compared to 2024.
This was especially due to a 24% reduction in the number of screenings. The reduction in the number of screenings is explained by our desire to ensure that the festival fits into a budget that is constrained this year by the additional expenses generated by our move to the Rive Gauche (higher venue rental costs, catering and accommodation expenses, and increased spending on the festival’s visibility.). In particular, we decided to reduce the festival by two days and not to programme a 5th venue on a permanent basis. In addition, this year we have concentrated certain events into a single 4-hour session, such as the Forum Public and the Festival Parlé, while maintaining the time allocated to these events equivalent to 2024. For example, the Forum Public brought together 190 professionals, whereas last year we had an average of 142 viewers over three separate discussion sessions. Last but not least, this year’s programme included several films over 4 hours long, notably by our 4 guest filmmakers.
We can therefore imagine that with the same number of screenings as in 2024, the overall number of spectators would have been the same. This can be confirmed by the fact that the cinema occupancy rate is the same as in 2024, at 61% of the overall capacity, while the average number of viewers per screening is 128, as in 2024.
In addition to these audience members, we will have to add those who were able to view the competition films via our dedicated online video library, as well as on the partner platforms that help to give Cinéma du réel and the films in its selections greater exposure: Mediapart with the films in the Première fenêtre section, Festival Scope pro et public which offers some of the films in our competition and by Ghassan Salhab, and Tënk where a selection of our out-of-competition programmes are still accessible. We’ll have to wait until the end of May to find out the exact number of internet users who have had access to festival programmes.
In addition, the Jeu de Paume commercial cinema hosted two repeat screenings of award-winning films on 15 April, which were also screened at the Cinématographe in Nantes and the Cinéma Jacques Tati in St Nazaire on 11 and 12 April. The films are also due to be shown again at the BPI’s Cinémathèque du Documentaire in October.
Finally, the Circulation, organised in collaboration with La Cinémathèque documentaire and Images en bibliothèques from 8 April to 30 June, includes screenings of films from our competition at 34 different locations across France.
For accredited members and students, we deliberately limited the number of accreditations and passes available in order to ensure that everyone could get into the theatre, not only because our total capacity was 24% lower than in 2024, but also because the number of seats available to these audiences had been negotiated with the commercial theatres and could not exceed 20% of the total capacity for each screening.
We had planned to make only 400 student passes available this year, but in the end we issued 437 (compared with 549 in 2024). As for accreditation, we accepted 1054 passes, 784 of which were eventually withdrawn, compared with 1450 accepted and 913 withdrawn in 2024. In addition to these passes and accreditations, we sold 60 Journée Réel Université passes and 42 Matinales passes.
But Cinéma du réel cannot be summed up in these figures, and it seems to us that in general the migration of the festival to the Rive Gauche and independent commercial cinemas has been enthusiastically received by the festival public, the programmed filmmakers and all the French and international professionals. The festival has also been extremely well received by the staff at the cinemas, some of whom have invested a great deal of time and effort in it. For the moment, however, we have little information on how the festival’s programme has been received by the regular audiences of these cinemas.
So it’s on the basis of a successful first year that we can work to improve the festival. We already know the main areas where we need to make improvements:
– Accredited ticket office needs to be simplified
– Conviviality that needs to be made even more enjoyable
– Festival’s visibility in the area needs to be optimised
– Programme schedule needs to be better adapted to the new context
– Team needs to be strengthed
Finally, we need to review the location of some of our events, and undoubtedly find more suitable locations, particularly for PARISDOC events.
Against the backdrop of this change of location, we have strengthened our press partnerships, notably with France Culture, Télérama and France Télévision, while ARTE has returned as a partner this year. Finally, new partnerships have been set up, notably with Le Film Français and the online website Business Doc Europe.
The quality of the programme, both in and out of competition, has also been praised by the press and the public, who emphasise the coherence between the films and the different sections, and appreciate the fact that Cinéma du réel welcomes both very young directors and world-renowned filmmakers, and that experimental cinema exists alongside direct cinema, documentary storytelling and conceptual works. Perhaps Cinéma du réel is the place where a certain spirit of cinema flourishes, to which we all return to reconnect and recharge.
Catherine Bizern, le 9 April 2025