Cultural diplomacy in tune with the market: The Young French Cinema program

1This article will discuss the Young French Cinema (YFC) program, launched in 2015 by UniFrance1 and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US. It will examine in particular the way in which the program seeks to articulate the diplomacy action and the functioning of the audiovisual market, as well as to broaden the notions of cinephilia and national cinema. According to De Baecque and Frémaux, cinephilia is “a way of watching films, of commenting them and of circulating the discourse”.2 Thus, as Jullier and Leveratto note, it is not a unitary practice, but a plural one, which “is not reduced to an artistic movement (conveyed by a circle of intellectuals or artists), nor to a national culture (defended by a social class)”.3 The choice made by the managers of the YFC program to bring multicultural French films to Alliances françaises and other art-house theatres in the US contribute to developing a kind of cinephilia that is more social, political and cosmopolitan tha