The Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film is right around the corner, starting May 16th. Guillaume Esmiol is anticipating seeing a number increase in attendance. Taking over from the market boss Jérôme Paillard, this is Esmiol’s first year as the festival’s executive director. Esmiol patiently waits for the festival but is keeping an eye on the number of attendance with anticipation. 

Esmiol is expecting record-breaking attendance compared to other years. Numbers are looking higher than ever due to the pandemic restrictions decreasing. In recent reports, there have been 11,200 anticipated attendees. As of last year, the total number of attendees ended up being 12,100 in total. This means the numbers are 15% higher than last year. 

I think we could beat our 2019 record when there were just over 12,500 accredited guests,” Esmiol anticipated. “It could be that people have registered earlier… we’ll see.”

When looking into geographical demographics, there has been a rise in interest from Asian countries. Earlier reports for May showed that about 170 Mainland Chinese professionals are registered to attend compared to last year’s 25. This could be because of the rise of attention the Asian film industry is receiving at this moment in time. There are also 80 Hong Kong professionals reportedly registered, which is an increase compared to last year’s numbers which came to 30. Even though the numbers are higher than the previous year, Esmiol notes that this is still far from the record of Chinese professional attendance in 2019, which was 620. 

This year, there is also a trend of interest from Spain, the market’s Country of Honor. Spain will be honored for a $1.7B government-backed drive to set Spain on course to become a notable European film and TV player. 

Despite the conflict in certain countries, some, such as Ukraine and Iran, are still present. Ukraine professionals will be in attendance with free market badges. The market also has multiple events planned, such as Ukraine in Focus Pitching Session, which will present ten films still in development. Iran’s diaspora filming community will also have a spotlight to promote awareness and support for the Woman Life Freedom protests back home. 

Esmiol also wants to focus on pleasing the buyers with new and old features, such as reviving the two screening rooms in the Riviera exhibition hall. He also wants to help glorify the screening process and make it easier to screen more films.

Films sales is the at the heart of the historic market and for me, it remains paramount. We’ve been talking a lot to sales companies this year and even ran a workshop in the lead-up to the Marché to look at what we could do to improve their experiences, around screening and venues.

This is to promote more foot traffic in the hall. There is also a focus on the Plage de Palmes beachfront launch, which will be on Plage de Goeland.