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The producer of The Count of Monte Cristo reveals ALL the secrets of French cinema - Dimitri Rassam
3/10TL;DR
Dimitri Rassam says the future of European film lies in combining independent-cinema discipline with stronger industrial methods, at a time when audience habits, financing and cultural attention have been reshaped by Covid, streaming and fragmentation.
KEY POINTS
French hits do not automatically travel
Dimitri Rassam argues that a strong result in France does not guarantee the same impact abroad. He cites one of his films as drawing 9.5 million admissions in France but only 4.5 million internationally, a gap he considers normal because a French cultural event does not carry the same weight for foreign audiences. For him, delivering good films is necessary, but no longer sufficient to create international momentum.
A gap between Hollywood blockbusters and small films
Rassam sees the market as increasingly polarized between films costing more than 100 million and films below 10 million, with the middle largely abandoned by major US studios. His strategy is to occupy that under-served space by borrowing the best business practices from both worlds. The aim is not to compete head-on with American studios on their home turf, but to build ambitious European projects with clearer commercial logic.
European talent as a strategic advantage
He rejects any retreat into a purely national model and argues instead for access to the widest possible pool of creators, especially across Europe. In his view, French cinema should protect its talent base while opening itself more broadly to European collaboration. That approach is meant to produce films with stronger export potential without imitating the American system outright.
Streaming changed the value of the cinema trip
Rassam says audience behavior shifted sharply after Covid. Before the pandemic, he estimates that 50% to 70% of moviegoers chose a film in front of the theater at the last minute. That reflex has largely disappeared, making the cinema outing a more deliberate act that now needs a stronger promise of scale, relief or exceptionality.
Producing remains a confidence business
Financing films still depends on scripts and packaging, but Rassam insists that trust is decisive. Investors and partners back projects not only on quality, but on whether teams share the same vision and can disagree productively before reaching the finish line. He compares that dynamic to building a start-up team, where execution depends as much on human alignment as on the initial idea.
Past distribution shocks shaped his view
On The Little Prince, Rassam recalls the limits of relying on global partners even when a project appears successful. He describes a case in which an American studio sold the film to Netflix without his knowledge a week before, illustrating how control over distribution can shift suddenly. Such episodes reinforced his focus on ownership, deal structure and long-term positioning.
Cinema is being transformed, not replaced
Rassam does not treat technological disruption as an external threat to resist. He sees cinema as an industry that has always evolved through technical change, from sound and color to new financing and distribution models, and places artificial intelligence within that historical continuum. The challenge, in his view, is to understand what new tools allow rather than trying to preserve old methods unchanged.
Cultural fragmentation is now a core challenge
Beyond streaming economics, he identifies cultural segmentation as one of the biggest structural problems. Shared cultural crossroads have weakened, and different age groups increasingly consume entirely separate references, including major online stars unknown outside their own communities. For a producer, that makes it harder to create works that become common social experiences, which he sees as one of cinema’s enduring civic roles.
Personal history informs a transnational outlook
Rassam links part of his worldview to a family history stretching from Mosul and Beirut to France. He traces the name Rassam to the broader Levant, notes that his grandfather joined the French Resistance in 1940 despite never having seen France, and points to the 19th-century archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam among his ancestors. That background reinforces his attachment to stories, transmission and cross-border identity.
CONCLUSION
Rassam’s position is that European cinema can still grow if it becomes more ambitious, more collaborative and more industrial without losing its creative identity. The central challenge is to make films that justify the trip to theaters while still cutting through a fragmented global culture.
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