France’s big TV Rendez-Vous is on the move. The market is where French TV distributors show off the best of their wares to international buyers. Having been held in St. Tropez and Biarritz it is taking up residence in the port city of Le Havre in Normandy, Northern France, for its thirtieth edition.
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Coming ahead of Mipcom, the market has traditionally allowed buyers a moment to screen the best of the upcoming French content in a convivial setting, with lunchtime and evening social events laid on, and, in recent years, a Gala Screening. Ca c’est Paris has the Gala slot this time, with another evening featuring a screening of the much-anticipated France Télévisions and Paramount+ action-comedy Zorro .
The annual export figures for French programming are also revealed at the event, showing how Gallic fare is being received around the world.
The TV Rendez-Vous has been run by Unifrance since it absorbed its fellow industry org TV France International in 2021, creating one body spanning film and TV. Ahead of the trip to Le Havre, Unifrance Executive Director, Daniela Elstner, clues Deadline readers into what to expect.
DEADLINE: There are a lot of markets for TV buyers, what is the USP of the Le Havre Rendez-Vous?
DANIELA ELSTNER: I used to be a sales agent so I still remember going to Biarritz and I went to St. Tropez before. But it’s not necessarily about the place, but about the way it’s organized and the fact that the buyers still go to watch programs on-site, and then they go to have lunch together. People speak about what they have seen, sometimes they are with other buyers, sometimes they are with people from other countries. There’s an ongoing discussion about programs, you tell people what you’ve just seen. People have meetings arranged, but this adds something, this informal element is quite unique.
DEADLINE: Rendez-Vous is hitting 30. How has the way that buyers screen and preview content changed over time?
ELSTNER: I think it changed a lot since Covid and even before, where people started sending out screening links, and each company has its own private screening room. But buyers can get overwhelmed by all the links and web screenings. They are often watching in the office and probably a lot of times are on their computer and have messages coming in and are answering emails. I think it’s a very different thing at the Rendez-Vous.
DEADLINE: What was behind the move to Le Havre?
ELSTNER: Actually, it’s very simple. We wanted to move from Biarritz partly for budgetary reasons. It’s still high season there in September, so it’s very expensive, and prices have not gone down, but gone up. We still wanted to be in a city, and one that was convenient and had space for the market as well as enough hotel rooms and venues to cater for hundreds of people.
We also wanted more support from the city we chose. Normandy and Le Havre were not the only ones that would have been very happy to have something like the Rendez-Vous and we had other options, so it was a tough decision. After we gave our Board the choices, everyone said: ‘We go to Le Havre.’
It’s a very different city to Biarritz. There is a different energy. It’s a very modern city, in a way. We have a Mayor (Édouard Philippe) and a whole team who are very keen on having us there. Édouard Philippe is coming to the opening.
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DEADLINE: Where markets are situated in the calendar is very important. Tell us about your calendar moment given the proximity to Mipcom and other big get-togethers later in the year.
ELSTNER: It’s very good, actually, because September is the start of the last part of the year. If you launch something in September, you maybe don’t conclude the deal immediately in Le Havre, but you will then sign it at MIPCOM and it’s all prepared. For the buyers, I think the good thing is they can see so much French content, we have animation, fiction, we have documentary. It means they’ve already seen all the new French programs. They might not buy everything because they also want to wait and see what there is at Mipcom, but they have it on their on their mind. That’s really very convenient for everyone.
At the Rendez-Vous, you also have, of course, all the deals that might not have been signed before the summer break.
DEADLINE: How are attendance numbers looking with the move to Le Havre?
ELSTNER: We have pretty much the same numbers. What is interesting is that we have more senior people coming from Paris for one day because you can take a train in the morning and return the same evening. We also have more people from the CNC coming because it’s closer [to their HQ], and we have more press.
In recent years we have added the Gala Screening and we have events in different locations every evening.
DEADLINE: The Le Havre Rendez-Vous is organized by Unifrance after the merger with TVFI. How do you reflect on that change a few years on?
ELSTNER: It changed with the global platforms. Once you started to have the same publicity for TV as for cinema and Netflix and others started to promote a TV series like any film, there was a crunch. And at the same time, we had saw people from cinema going to TV. I think this made it very obvious that you can’t have two associations in two different buildings
It was tough to do it because of the subsidy system in France and how TV production and cinema production are supported by the government, they have a very strict separation and different rules. When we said we would merge, there was concern that everything suddenly would be one, which is totally not the case. We do the communication together and we do things together, but we also do things totally separately. We still have two legs, but it’s really two legs and one body.
The Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Le Havre takes place September 2 through 6.
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