Islands in the stream

The battle to get Netflix and other platforms to invest in local content faces a Trumpian stumbling block.

- BY PETER GRIFFIN

Many a university thesis has been devoted to picking apart exactly why French films, particularly the work of the New Wave greats such as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda and Jean-Luc Godard, are so good.

But one thing is clear - France has always been militant about making sure French culture is adequately reflected in its film and TV output. That extends to the streaming era, where video-streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ must spend 20% of the revenue they generate in France on local productions, an amount estimated at around €300 million (NZ$492 million) annually since 2021 when the rule came in.

On top of that, France enforces a European Union mandate requiring 30% of streamers' content to be European work. As a result, streamers are investing heavily in creating high-quality content in the French language for the local market that will also have global appeal. It's why I watch a lot of good French TV shows on those platforms.