Lyon's Classic Film Market Turns 14, Honors Greece, Spotlights Taiwan

By Elena Vasquez

The International Classic Film Market (MIFC) runs October 13-16 in Lyon, marking its 14th edition with a new venue, a Greek country of honor and a dedicated Taiwan Focus. The market sits alongside the Lumière Film Festival, run by Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux.

Greece takes center stage this year as its government rolls out a €750 million ($840 million) "Greece On Screen" plan. The program supports production and distribution. It also funds preserving, digitizing and restoring the country's film heritage.

The Taiwan Focus builds on years of restoration work. Local rights holders, the government and international distributors are working to bring more Taiwanese films back into circulation through cinemas, television and DVD/Blu-ray.

What is on this year's program?

The lineup mixes studio executives, curators and specialty distributors:

• Paramount's Charlotte Barker joins Park Circus CEO Douglas Davis for a panel on the "Anglo-Saxon" model for classic-film distribution and rights.
• Paolo Moretti — head of ECAL university's cinema department, Geneva's Grütli Cinemas and Fondazione Prada's Film Fund — takes part in a special conversation.
• Spencer Collantes, VP of Clockwork, Warner Bros.' specialty film division, presents a case study on re-releasing Ken Russell's controversial 1971 film "The Devils."

The market itself relocates. It moves from the Institut Lumière, the organization behind the festival, to the Grand Hôtel-Dieu, a major historic site in central Lyon. The move puts participants closer to the festival's cinemas, restaurants and city center.

Why does a small market matter?

The MIFC remains small in scale but occupies a rare position. It is one of the world's very few business meets devoted entirely to classic and heritage film. Its key achievement, says MIFC co-head Anaïs Desrieux, has been giving the sector's players a permanent annual meeting point.

"One way in which the MIFC has made a difference is by structuring the sector through a physical venue, by materializing this moment where people can meet," Desrieux said. "That has firmly established the MIFC on the industry calendar, alongside the festival and its enormous pulling power."

Demand tells its own story. The market's catalogue holders session was the first event to fill up this year, according to Gérald Duchaussoy, who co-heads the MIFC. Major groups such as Studiocanal and Warner Bros. have created dedicated catalogue labels, he noted, reflecting "growing recognition that these films represent genuine added value rather than a burden."

"It reveals a strategy in the way companies expose and exploit their films, at festivals, through theatrical releases, on DVD and Blu-ray, and through international sales," Duchaussoy said. "It is a fairly fast-moving niche sector, and you can feel things accelerating."

The takeaway: heritage film has shifted from corporate afterthought to active revenue line.

What problems does "hyper-distribution" create?

Reaching audiences remains a central challenge. The Paramount-Park Circus panel will examine specialist intermediaries such as Park Circus, which often act as the point of contact for rights, DCPs, prints and subtitled materials across territories.

"You can be in Australia and speak to Park Circus to obtain a Universal film," Duchaussoy said. Other rights holders may sell directly in some territories while working through local distributors in others.

Wider access creates its own risks. Industry professionals warn of "hyper-distribution," Desrieux said. "Rights are sold and then resold in fragmented pieces, and you can lose traceability, visibility and control over those rights," she noted, warning of potential revenue losses.

Can heritage cinema point the way forward?

As the wider film industry grapples with overwhelming content volume, fragmented audiences and multiplying distribution windows, Desrieux argues that classic cinema supplies answers.

"Heritage cinema is a tremendous laboratory for exploring these questions and, ultimately, a laboratory for the future," she said. The challenges are familiar across the industry: making films stand out, renewing audiences, preserving diversity and coordinating theatrical, streaming and physical releases.

For the market's future, Desrieux points to becoming more European and international while broadening the conversation beyond heritage cinema. She also cites the Classics Innovation Corner, which showcases new tools for making rights information clearer and easier to share — ultimately helping more films circulate.

The line between "classic" and "contemporary" may itself soften, she said: "Many of the questions we have been addressing for years in heritage cinema have now become central questions for the entire industry." And the logic runs both ways: "Today's contemporary films will be tomorrow's heritage films."