France, South Korea to Co-Chair Summit on Cinema, Series and Vidgames

While in South Korea on an official go to French President Emmanuel Macron, announced, alongside South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, that each nations will co-chair a landmark worldwide summit devoted to cinema, sequence and video games.

Dubbed the “Cinema & Moving Image Summit,” the event will convey together round one 100 business leaders from round the world: CEOs of major global firms, filmmakers, expertise, policymakers, figures from the arthouse world, in addition to movie schooling advocates.

The summit, which was first reported by the AFP, can be hosted on Sept. 7 at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence. Jae-myung will also journey to France for a state go to on that event.

The agenda will sort out some of the most urgent challenges going through the sector, from the future of theatrical exhibition and the convergence of tv, streaming and gaming, to movie heritage preservation, sustainable manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

For Gaëtan Bruel, who presides over France’s highly effective National Film Board (CNC), the stakes couldn’t be larger. “We are living through a moment as decisive as the invention of cinema by the Lumière brothers 130 years ago,” Bruel tells Variety, pointing that the “challenges are immense, but nothing is written in advance: this moment of crisis can be a moment of reinvention, provided we are proactive and united.”

“In the early days, cinema was invented by creators and entrepreneurs. Today, a new dimension is added: we need global governance for our sector that is equal to the challenges ahead,” he argues.

Bruel pleads that “new alliances must be forged — cinema with video games, broadcasters with streamers, Europe with Asia and beyond, and of course the United States, whose many players are ready to take part in this reinvention.”

France and Korea have so much in frequent on the cultural aspect. They each have strong cinematic historical past, vibrant local industries and share comparable views on the significance of authorship.

In tv, South Korea has been equally profitable with various reveals that turned global mega-hits on streamers, notably Netflix’s “Squid Game” created by Hwang Dong-hyuk.

South Korea was truly celebrated last month at Series Mania Festival in Northern France as the nation of honor, which coincided with the a hundred and fortieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Korea.

Series Mania reported that Korea’s content market reached $43.1 billion in 2024, up 5.7% from $40.8 billion in 2023, sustaining its place as the eighth-largest content market globally.

At the same time, each France and South Korea have skilled difficult theatrical markets in the wake of the pandemic. Once the fifth largest cinema territory worldwide, South Korea noticed its box workplace by more than half between 2019 and 2024.

Still, South Korea – like France — is house to many celebrated auteurs, such as Bong Joon-ho, who made historical past together with his Palme d’Or-winning darkish comedy “Parasite” nabbing best image, on top of best director, worldwide movie and authentic screenplay in 2020.
This yr, another South Korean grasp, Park Chan-wook, will preside over the jury of the Cannes Film Festival.

The Cinema & Moving Image Summit will comply with another initiative pushed by Macron’s impulse. France beforehand held an International AI Summit which gathered heads of states and governments, policymakers, business leaders, researchers and innovators in 2025.