Editor

I am simply amazed by the combinations of historical records broken by the french film industry last year AND wanted to take a moment to share the salute with you, and them.

• 2011 was one of the best Cannes selection in years, in my view, with Awards everyone agreed to be well deserved and well balanced.
  
• 215 M admissions, a record (going back to 1966 levels, pre facebook, pre TV, pre world Cup audience...)
  
• Record percentage of cinema attendance 65.6% of French population saw a film: crisis what crisis?. ("Let us go to the movies to forget"...)
  
• Record 41% of Box Office take from local films, "cocorico", Rien à déclarer, Intouchables...16 film scored over a million admissions
  
• 18,4 M admissions and counting...for "Intouchables", amazing score for a good comedy with good positive human feelings and attitude (5% of benefits go to a charity!)
  
• And of course 10 Oscar nominations (6 Golden Globes, 12 Bafta...) a loud salute for a silent film (so creative, but only 1.5M admissions before the french relaunch)
  

  
  

Now if you asked french players how 2011 was, you bet they would complain about, crisis, their unrecognised talent, distribution bottlenecks, reduced subsidies, growing difficulty to sell to TV financiers like Canal+...
In fact you may ask the same question every year and get the same results!
By the way here is the over performing share price for Gaumont (Intouchable is their biggest hit ever), you want to compare with the average CAC 40 trend in orange.



Puzzling isn it?
And the winners are...