France and Korea have each pledged €500 million ($581 million) to a joint initiative designed to strengthen the global screen industries, with the first funding instruments deploying from 2027 through 2031.
The Lumière Partnership, unveiled Monday at the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, is open to additional countries and will prioritize companies with the ambition and capacity to compete at international scale.
The summit is co-chaired by President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Lee Jae-myung of the Republic of Korea. “France and South Korea have taken different paths, but both have shown that openness to the world can strengthen, rather than erase, a distinctive creative culture,” Macron wrote in an op-ed for Variety.
France’s contribution will be channeled through Bpifrance, the national public investment bank, which has backed the country’s cultural and creative industries since 2020 and, working alongside the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC), has already fast-tracked nearly 150 companies through its French Touch plan. The new envelope will finance a range of instruments: equity stakes to build the financial foundations of companies positioned to grow beyond their home markets, dedicated funding for research, development and creative innovation, and co-financing structures designed to share risk with banks and private investors.
