France and South Korea launch an unprecedented summit on cinema

France and South Korea will co-chair the first international summit dedicated to the future of cinema and animation on September 7, 2026, at the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Called the Lumière Summit, the event is expected to bring together 150 high-level guests from more than thirty countries across five continents.

Responding to the profound changes in the sector

Announced jointly in early April by Emmanuel Macron and his South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, this summit will bring together business leaders, policymakers, filmmakers, and media education professionals to discuss the upheavals affecting the global animation ecosystem. According to CNC President Gaëtan Bruel, this sector is experiencing a moment as pivotal as the invention of cinema 130 years ago.

Among the topics identified are the future of the movie theater, the shift of audiences towards social platforms, the questioning of premium economic models by low-cost offerings, as well as the upheavals caused by artificial intelligence throughout the production chain.

A rapprochement between Europe and Asia

France was chosen to co-chair this summit alongside a country whose film support model, structured around a public agency closely linked to the CNC (National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image), shares many similarities. The stated objective is to lay the foundations for genuine multilateralism in the animated image sector, in which video games could play a structuring role alongside traditional cinema and audiovisual media, alongside the United States and the rest of the world.

The summit must also lead to concrete commitments from the sector, particularly on the regulation of artificial intelligence and on media literacy from a young age, in a context of geopolitical tensions and fears of deindustrialization that weigh on the entire sector.