Requested and authorized outdoor movie screenings in France 2019-2020

The coronavirus outbreak had an undeniable impact on the organization of open-air screenings in France. Even though more requests were registered in 2020 than the previous year, 2.973 screenings out of 4.272 were authorized, meaning that about a third of the screenings were denied.

Outdoor film experience

Due to the state of health emergency declared in March in France, particular care has been taken to recall the need to obtain authorization before organizing an outdoor screening. Paris held the highest number of authorized open-air film screenings, followed by the Isère and Bouches-du-Rhônes departments with 172 and 152 authorized screenings, respectively. As a matter of comparison, the Bas-Rhin department accounted for 133 denied screenings.

Impact of the pandemic on cultural activities

A lot of French people had to drastically change their daily routine as lockdown measures were set up in France. As people spent more time than usual at home, their consumption of cultural goods evolved as well; half of them indeed reported watching more movies than before. Video-on-demand services have also experienced a renewed interest among the French population. While Netflix is still ahead of the curve, Disney+ has known an unprecedented peak of popularity at its release in France in April 2020.