More than 4500 industry professionals, among them Juliette Binoche, Joachim Trier, Ruben Östlund, Sandra Hüller and Francis Ford Coppolla, have signed an open letter calling on safeguards to film and audiovisual funding following the proposal to merge the MEDIA strand of the Creative Europe programme into the new AgoraEU mega-programme.
The letter, which represents all sectors of the film value chain, from creators, actors and producers to distributors, sales agents, cinemas operators, academies and festivals, celebrates MEDIA and its historical support of the film and audiovisual industrials, but its key purpose is to secure guarantees from Brussels that such funding will continue.
“We, European cinema professionals and citizens – all cinema lovers – call upon the European Commission, European Parliament and Member States to future-proof the success and integrity of the vital and precious MEDIA programme and reinforce its resources. There are no shared values, no democracy, and no European soft power, without artistic creation,” the letter stresses.
In July 2025, the European Commission proposed that €8.6 billion should be set aside for AgoraEU under its 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) plan. In April 2026, the European Parliament suggested this should be hiked to €10.7 billion, an increase of €2.1 billion.
While the overall budget seems set to increase substantially, no specific funding is yet guaranteed for the film and audiovisual sector, which is what the open letter is addressing. It is a situation which, at least for now, is leaving industry players in the dark. “The proposal remains vague with no assurance that the key actions that made MEDIA successful will continue: support for independent production, theatrical distribution, training, and more,” organisers of the letter write.
At Cannes 2026, the letter’s slogan, “Europe needs cinema,” will be featured on badges distributed to attendees “so that they can keep on showing their love for European cinema,” organisers of the letter write.
The letter, which is available in many languages, including English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, reads as follow:
Cinema needs Europe, Europe needs cinema
“No art form, like cinema, traverses our diurnal consciousness so directly as to touch our feelings, deep within the twilight chamber of our soul.”
For more than 130 years, this twilight chamber, as Ingmar Bergman called it, was brought to life by the lives of others, by their thoughts, their struggles, their words and their gazes.
Cinema begins with the desire to create. It becomes a film through a succession of encounters: screenwriters, directors and producers develop it, cinematographers, actors, and technical crews contribute, film funds support it, sales agents and distributors bring it to cinemas and festivals – and later broadcasters and streamers, critics debate, and audiences embrace it.
Filmmaking is a collaborative art. It becomes an industry through job creation and technological innovation. Yet every film remains a prototype, impossible to mass-produce on an assembly line. There are no economies of scale in storytelling. This dual nature calls for deliberate political choices engaging public and private operators.
Europe itself, as a collective endeavour, was imagined in stories before it was built, it is Stefan Zweig’s continent of ideas, not armies. Cinema brought this imagined Europe to life: La Dolce Vita, Wings of Desire or Amélie turned Rome, Berlin and Paris into shared cultural references. Anatomy of a Fall, Sirat, or The New Years, global successes emerging from European talents, continue to build bridges across languages and borders.
In Europe, the political choice for cinema, be it Czech, Italian, Swedish, Slovenian, Portuguese or Belgian, is the MEDIA programme. Just as the idea of Europe itself is a unique project, the idea of the MEDIA programme is to sustain diverse European voices in a common house.
For over 35 years, it has been supporting the creation of European stories from script development to production by independent production companies, the releases in theatres and online, festivals, professionals’ training and upskilling. It has given a chance to all kinds of European projects, including the most unexpected ones, from East to West and from North to South. Building on the Union and Member States’ regulations, it has also reinforced our industries against global giants, allowing film professionals to face sector upheavals and resist standardization, and fostered a dynamic and job-creating ecosystem.
MEDIA is a drop in the ocean of European funding: it represents 0,2% of the Union’s budget, while, as a comparison, the common agricultural policy alone accounts for 32% of this budget.
Yet, it has been a European success story with an invaluable impact.
Thanks to MEDIA, works that nurtured the growth of Ruben Östlund or Justine Triet travelled the world.
Thanks to MEDIA, Europe wins an Oscar almost every year: after Flow, Gints Zilbalodis’s animated film, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value and the documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin took the spotlight in 2026.
Thanks to MEDIA, the voices of exiled and oppressed authors, such as Jafar Panahi or Mohammad Rasoulof, have the freedom to reach audiences worldwide.
Thanks to MEDIA, our cherished neighbourhood cinemas can remain open to the world through diverse programming, and do not have to close their doors.
Without MEDIA, we would all be a little less European.
Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras once said, “you cannot change people’s political vision with a film, but you can, at the very least, kindle a political discussion”. In times marked by war, geopolitical tensions, and pressure on democracy – our foremost common good – this function is essential. We strive to give our societies, our children and future adults a taste for collective experience, empathy, and resistance.
Yet Europe’s ability to tell its own stories is under strain. Most audiovisual productions viewed in Europe originate outside the continent. Global platforms increasingly shape visibility, access and stories. At the same time, the sector faces structural transformations: shifting audience habits, including declining cinema attendance, the rise of artificial intelligence, and growing geopolitical competition.
The European Union is currently revising the rules that enable European cinema to flourish, to travel, and to carry our common voice. It includes the future of MEDIA in the new AgoraEU programme.
It is now the time to write the next chapter of the European Cinema story, with even greater ambition, commensurate with the challenges we face. We must not fail to see that the destiny of democracy and that of cinema, both born in Europe, are intimately linked. Because every time a cinema opens, democratic life reasserts itself.
We, European cinema professionals and citizens – all cinema lovers – call upon the European Commission, European Parliament and Member States to future-proof the success and integrity of the vital and precious MEDIA programme and reinforce its resources. There are no shared values, no democracy, and no European soft power, without artistic creation.
Signatories
The call for support to the Open Letter ‘Europe needs cinema, Cinema needs Europe,’ was launched end of April. Early May, it already gathered the signatures of more than 4,500 European film professionals and talents, sometimes even beyond the continent including more than 100 prominent directors and actors, some of them selected in Cannes this year, such as Juliette Binoche, Costa-Gavras, Joachim Trier, Ruben Östlund, Stellan Skarsgård, Sandra Hüller, Vicky Krieps, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Rebecca Zlotowski, Yorgos Lanthimos , Oliver Laxe, İlker Çatak, Francis Ford Coppola, Michel Hazanavicius, Agnieszka Holland, Lukas Dhont, Pawel Pawlikowski, Nadav Lapid, Laura Wandel, Ariane Labed, Agnès Jaoui, Clémence Poésy, Arnaud Desplechin, Cedric Klapisch, Arthur Harari, Danis Tanovic, Margarethe Von Trotta…
Other prominent signatories
Aida Begic, , Athina Tsangari, Belen Funes, Sébastien Betbeder, Carla Simon, Chiara Malta, Chie Hayakawa, Chloé Mazlo, Claire Simon, Corneliu Porumboiu, Daniele Segre, Davy Chou, Dominik Moll, Elie Grappe, Emily Atef, Emmanuel Marre, Eric Lartigau, Eskil Vogt, Fabien Gorgeart, Fabrice du Welz, Fien Troch, Guslagie Malanda, Hany Abu-Assad, Hlynur Palmason, Iciar Bollain, Ildiko Enyedi, Isabella, Jaco Van Dormael, Jan Kounen, Joachim Lafosse, Jonathan Pryce, Jorge Thielen Armand, Juho Kuosmanen, Julie Delpy, Karin Viard, Laszlo Nemes, Laura Ferrés, Lina Soualem, Lionel David Baier, Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Mar Coll, Maria Schrader, Marina Foïs, Marrakchi Laïla, Marta Nieto, Mathieu Amalric, Matthias Glasner, Max Richter, Michel Leclerc, Miguel Gomes, Mohamed Siam, Neil Pearson, Nicolas Philibert, Nicole Garcia, Olivier Masset-Depasse, Panos H. Koutras, Paola Cortellesi, Pascale Ferran, Patric Chiha, Patricia Mazuy, Pia Marais, Pierfrancesco Favino, Pierre Schoeller, Radu Jude, Rúnar Rúnarsson, Sepideh Farsi, Sharunas Bartas, Stéphane Demoustier, Tatiana Delaunay, Teona Mitevska, Thomas Cailley, Ulrich Seidl, Ursula Meier, Victoria Musiedlak, Visar Morina, Volker Schlöndorff, Yvo Muller, Ziad Bakri.
