France and South Korea launch $1.16 billion fund for global film and TV industries

France and South Korea have committed a combined $1.16 billion to a new five-year investment fund for the global film and audiovisual industry, the centerpiece of an inaugural summit that drew government leaders and entertainment executives from dozens of countries to confront the twin pressures of generative artificial intelligence and platform consolidation.

French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung unveiled the initiative, called the Lumière Partnership, on Monday at the Lumière Summit held at the Fondation Maeght, a modern-art institution in the hilltop town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France. The gathering, organized by France's National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image, was billed as the first international summit dedicated to the future of cinema and the moving image, and it drew more than 200 producers, studio executives, streaming platforms, financiers and policymakers from 60 countries and international organizations.

A $1.16 billion pledge, five years to spend it

Under the partnership, France and South Korea will each contribute €500 million, or roughly $581 million, between 2027 and 2031. France's share will flow through Bpifrance, the state investment bank that has backed the country's cultural and creative industries since 2020. In a statement, Bpifrance said the money would flow through its existing French Touch plan for cultural and creative industries, which has already supported roughly 150 companies, including the production groups Mediawan and Fédération Studios. The new money is earmarked for three uses: equity investment to help independent producers scale internationally, funding for research and development tied to production technology, and co-financing arrangements meant to draw in banks and private investors alongside the public money.

South Korea's matching pledge, described by officials in Seoul as roughly 800 billion won over the same period, is intended to support Korean production companies pursuing international co-productions and distribution deals, extending the global momentum built by Korean film and television since the export success of titles such as "Parasite" and "Squid Game." Both governments framed the fund as open-ended: additional countries can join the partnership, and the first financing instruments are not expected to deploy until 2027.

The financial pledge was paired with a policy document, the Déclaration Lumière, which the CNC said was endorsed by more than 120 signatories at the summit. The declaration sets out principles on protecting creative works, preserving cultural diversity, keeping human creators central to how artificial intelligence is used in production, and ensuring fair compensation as new technologies reshape the industry's economics.

Why a film summit, and why now

The Lumière Summit was conceived as a response to a set of pressures that have been building across the global film business for several years: a slow recovery in theatrical attendance since the pandemic, the concentration of distribution power among a handful of American streaming platforms, and the more recent disruption posed by generative AI systems capable of producing video, voices and likenesses without human performers. Those themes ran through both leaders' remarks. Macron told attendees that "the way audiovisual content is created and consumed is changing at an unprecedented scale and speed," and warned against ceding creative work to automated systems, saying, according to Variety's account of his opening address, that "we would be making a tremendous mistake if this technology became a tool that replaces, or claims to replace, creators."

Lee, on a state visit to France that also included bilateral talks with Macron on defense and technology cooperation, used his remarks to make the case for independent cinema specifically. "Independent cinema is, beyond any dispute, the future of the film industry and the engine of its sustainable growth," he said, according to Variety's report on his speech, adding that "the diverse experiments conducted through independent film serve as turning points that alter existing cinematic grammar." In a separate address reported by the Korea Herald, he argued that technological disruption need not be zero-sum: "Each time a change came about, it was assumed that the new would replace the old, but this has not always been the case."

"The film and audiovisual industry must be rooted in human creativity and must resonate with human emotions." — South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, in remarks at the Lumière Summit

Who the fund is meant to help, and what comes with it

The intended beneficiaries are independent producers and mid-sized studios in France, South Korea and, eventually, other participating countries — companies that officials in both governments argue are being squeezed as production and distribution consolidate around a small number of global streaming platforms. Bpifrance's release pointed to the French Touch plan's existing track record as a model, citing its role in building companies such as Mediawan and Fédération Studios into international players through equity investment rather than one-off subsidies.

The summit produced several related initiatives alongside the headline funding figure. One, called IRIS, or the International Resilience Initiative for Independent Screens, is intended to support independent cinemas, distributors and film networks and will be guided by a council of more than 40 filmmakers that includes Martin Scorsese, Denis Villeneuve and Wim Wenders. A second, Alliance Lumière, is described as the first global network of public cinema and audiovisual institutions, with 54 national agencies already signed on. A third program, Audiovisual Next Gen, will place 20 professionals under 35 into a mentorship track run by the CNC in partnership with Netflix, RTL Group and Mediawan — a notable detail, given that streaming platforms and traditional broadcasters are otherwise framed in much of the summit's rhetoric as competitors to the independent sector the fund is designed to protect.

South Korea's participation carried its own domestic political backdrop. Beyond the summit, the Korea Times reported that Lee met separately in Paris with Korean filmmakers, including director Lee Chang-dong and actors Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu, to discuss the state's role in supporting Korean content abroad. Lee argued the goal was less about resisting global platforms than about linking them productively to Korean production: "The synergy created when the uniqueness of the local ecosystem meets the expansiveness of global networks is an important system that could help amplify the results of us all."

What happens next

No financing has moved yet. Bpifrance and its South Korean counterpart are expected to spend the coming months setting up the mechanics of the joint fund, with the first instruments — equity stakes, R&D grants and co-financing guarantees — not scheduled to begin deploying until 2027. Officials from both governments described the Lumière Partnership as open to additional countries, and the CNC has framed the broader summit as a recurring gathering rather than a one-time event, positioning it as a counterpart to Cannes on the policy and financing side of the industry rather than its festival and sales side. Whether other governments join, and whether the fund's investments meaningfully alter the competitive position of independent producers against the platforms that dominate global distribution, will likely take years rather than months to assess — a timeline that roughly matches the fund's own five-year deployment window.