In Tourcoing, several actors from cultural and creative industries have outlined the same conviction. Francophonie will not survive in this sector through symbolic defense alone. To exist in the face of platforms, it must structure itself as a complete value chain capable of producing, disseminating, and making its content visible.
The PIX Festival opened its professional days with a focus on the cultural levers in the francophonie. With a turnover exceeding €100 billion in 2024 and over a million direct, indirect, and induced jobs, French cultural and creative industries (ICC) are anything but marginal. They could even, with Belgium, Quebec, and Francophone Africa, form a collective capable of having international impact.
However, between the weight of platforms, the dominance of English, and the challenge of structuring sustainable collaborations, the creative francophonie still remains a scattered power.
At the PIX Festival, the focus was less on symbolically defending the francophonie and more on finding concrete ways to make it visible, competitive, and sustainable.
Dimitri Gourdin, CEO of Zù, set the tone with an image that sums up the impasse faced. “Quebec has 9 million people in an Anglophone ocean. We manage to gather 1.2 million viewers, whereas France plays to audiences of 15 million.” Language still protects, but it does not guarantee the circulation of content or the strength of opportunities.
From Francophone Belgium, this reality resonates. Delphine Jenart, who manages the digital creativity ecosystem at Wake!, explains: “A territory that is small and heavily exposed to French culture must constantly defend its uniqueness.”
Based on this observation, CEO of Euracreative, Emmanuel Delamarre, asserts: “Francophone actors often meet, easily recognize each other, and sometimes build together, but they have not yet managed to transform this natural proximity into a sustainable organization.”
The transition to global scale requires more than a public reflex. The debate revolved around financing and scaling up. No ecosystem takes off if it waits for the government, incubators, or universities, according to Zù’s CEO, Dimitri Gourdin. He stressed the need for major companies to stop watching opportunities pass by and start playing their role as first customers, partners, and funders.
The facilitator of the digital creativity ecosystem at Wake! nuanced this sentiment without contradicting the core idea. According to her, public authorities are there, in a way, to support an initiative that truly comes from the bottom-up. In other words, public authorities can effectively support a movement when it starts on the ground and is anchored in a concrete network among operators.
With nearly 300 million speakers worldwide and a regional diversity that enriches it, the francophonie has a significant advantage. However, the focus is on a structuring perspective. Emmanuel Delamarre places this dynamic in a wider framework, one of agreements able to open markets between Europe and North America.
Cultural sovereignty is put to the test. When it comes to Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) and the “discoverability,” Gourdin refuses to engage in a direct confrontation with American platforms, emphasizing the need to push more French content into global catalogs. Delamarre supports this offensive logic, advocating for the transformation of shared heritage into a projection force, including Francophone Africa.
During this roundtable at PIX focusing on culture and francophonie, several strategies emerged to better promote Francophone ICCs. The necessity of building a real distribution strategy, supported by increased production efforts, as well as loosening a sometimes burdensome regulatory framework, was discussed.
Jenart shifts the focus to another blind spot – the construction of a common narrative. She emphasizes the importance of working on the symbolic reach of this dynamic, even going as far as imagining “a global day of Francophone culture.”
The work ahead may be long, but it seems to be underway, with Tourcoing as a starting point that could resonate in major francophone capitals.
