An alliance of prominent French business, publishing and film figures has joined forces to revive one of the most storied venues in Paris cinephilia, with luxury house Chanel serving as lead partner behind the reopening of the historic Saint-Germain-des-Prés cinema.
The Left Bank theater marked its return to public life last week with a gala screening of Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cannes competition title “Fatherland,” presented by Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Frémaux and attended by CNC president Gaëtan Bruel, who used the occasion to deliver a pointed defense of France’s theatrical model amid mounting political pressure.
The 208-seat venue reopened after more than a decade away from the public. Once known as the Bilboquet and later the Olympic Saint-Germain, the cinema hosted premieres by filmmakers including François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Costa-Gavras, whose political thriller “Z” famously played there for 20 consecutive weeks following its 1969 release.
Cinema Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Behind the project is an unusual coalition of financiers, producers and cultural patrons led by producer Charles Gillibert and investment banker Grégoire Chertok. Gillibert arrived at the reopening fresh from Cannes, where he presented Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Grand Prize-winning competition title “Minotaur.” Chertok, a longtime patron of the film industry and a lifelong cinephile, was behind the creation of the Cannes Film Festival’s first investment fund and recently received the Légion d’honneur from Bruel.
Joining them is Éric Lenoir, director of publication of Cahiers du Cinéma who serves as president of the Saint-Germain-des-Près cinema; Alexis Dantec, former managing director of film financing group Cofinova , is a co-owner of Les Films du Losange alongside Gillibert; Jean-Sébastien Decaux, the youngest son of outdoor advertising magnate Jean-Claude Decaux who bought Jacques Perrin’s Galatée Films in 2022; Vera Michalski-Hoffmann, a Swiss publisher and philanthropist who presides over the Libella group; Hugo Rubini, the founder of Rubini & Associés, a leading insurance provider to the French film industry; Georges Rocchietta, the co-founder and chairman of Atland; and Sylvain Mortera.
Rather than operating as a conventional commercial cinema, Saint-Germain-des-Prés is positioning itself as a permanent home for film lovers, combining contemporary auteur cinema, repertory screenings, filmmaker conversations, retrospectives and festival events. The cinema’s new managing director, Mathilde Lamour, said “The Saint Germain des Prés will be a home for all cinemas,” adding that “all countries will be represented, as well as all languages and all genres: fiction, drama, comedy and documentary.”
Bruel paid tribute to the venue’s history before turning to the present. “By relighting the projector at 22 rue Guillaume-Apollinaire, we are summoning the most cherished memories of French and international cinema,” he said. But he made clear that the evening was about more about resistance than nostalgia. “What we are celebrating tonight is not simply a glorious past — we are celebrating a very encouraging present. The present of cinema.”
That distinction carried weight. In the run-up to France’s next presidential election, far-right voices have been increasingly critical of the CNC and the unique financing system of that has long underpinned the French film industry. Detractors have characterized the model as cultural protectionism and out-of-touch from market realities.
Bruel pushed back with numbers. The CNC had released attendance figures earlier that day showing admissions up 20% over the first five months of the year, with French films accounting for roughly 44% of the domestic market — on par with American movies. Two out of three French people went to a cinema last year, averaging four visits and choosing French films 40% of the time, according to Bruel. “If there is a crisis in cinema, it may be on the other side of the Atlantic” — where an “overly financial, overly corporate approach to the medium had produced shrinking returns and, in some quarters, the conclusion that theatrical exhibition was finished,” he argued. The French model, he said, was “built on the principle that cinema serves the public interest rather than purely commercial ends,” and it has nurtured a “genuinely thriving” film culture.
“You thought you were coming to see a film,” he joked. “In fact, tonight is the first general assembly of the Revolutionaries of 22 rue Guillaume-Apollinaire — because there are battles to be fought.”
Some of those battles are also internal to the industry. France had built a sprawling exhibition network, but just one week before the reopening, independent venues faced pressure from larger industry players which Bruel described as unacceptable. “Diversity in cinema is not only diversity of films,” he said. “It is also diversity of venues. We must not defend a selective, convenient version of diversity. Diversity means all venues — and above all the small ones.”
The broader fight, however, remains political in a pre-election climate where the future of French cultural policy is at stake. “There are political choices that allow us to keep this pleasure alive, to embed it at the heart of our communities and our lives,” Bruel said. “And there are other political choices which would lead rather quickly to threatening that very pleasure.”
He singled out Chanel for its role in the project, saying France was fortunate to have “a magnificent partner standing alongside cinema in its most beautiful and most fragile expressions.” The luxury house financed the renovation and relaunch of the venue, extending a longstanding commitment to filmmaking that includes production partnerships, film restoration initiatives and support for festivals, such as the Biarritz Nouvelles Vagues Festival in France.
Introducing Pawlikowski’s film, Frémaux echoed Bruel’s defense of cinema as a public good before turning to the work itself. “Paweł Pawlikowski doesn’t make films very often, but he pursues an intensely personal path,” he said, recalling that “Ida” had “arrived out of nowhere” before going on to win the Oscar for best foreign-language film — confirming the emergence of a major filmmaker from “one of the great cinema countries, Poland.”
Fremaux went on describe “Fatherland” as “full of beauty, full of force and full of intellectual elevation” — a “portrait of postwar Germany and the trauma of exile rendered with the precision of a filmmaker working at the height of his powers.”
Frémaux also drew attention to Hans Zischler, who portrays Thomas Mann in the film. A distinguished actor and writer, Zischler had appeared in Wim Wenders’ “Kings of the Road” nearly 50 years ago — and Wenders had been present at Cannes just weeks earlier, producing a film by a young German director. Seeing the two men together again, Frémaux said, had been “a beautiful reminder of the passage of time.”
“Cinema exists to bring the past into the present, to bring history back into our minds and into our hearts,” Fremaux concluded.
The day after its inauguration, the Saint-Germain-des-Prés theater hosted a screening of Bertrand Mandico’s “Roma Elastica” — which premiered in Cannes’ Midnight Screenings section and stars Marion Cotillard — with both director and star in attendance, followed by a conversation moderated by filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy.
The opening program reflects Lamour’s vision of the venue as “a home for all cinemas.” Besides “Fatherland” and “Roma Elastica,” the theater will launch with screenings of several other Cannes titles, including Emmanuel Marre’s “A Man of Our Time”, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s “A Woman’s Life” and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur,” before pivoting to a mix of repertory screenings.
“There is an increasing need to exchange ideas and debate,” Lamour said. “Saint Germain des Prés is here for that.”
Marion Cotillard, Bertrand Mandico and Ramata-Toulaye Sy at the screening of “Roma Elastica”
philippe servent
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