The Filmin generation enjoys going to the cinema

In times when there al­ways seems to be an­other cin­ema clos­ing its doors for good, some are now see­ing an up­turn in their for­tunes thanks to the rise of au­teur films. We are talk­ing about films like Past Lives, Fallen Leaves, The Teacher Who Promised the Sea, Per­fect Days, The Zone of In­ter­est and, above all, Anatomy of a Fall. A whole se­ries of films that un­ex­pect­edly broke the bar­rier of 400,000 euros in rev­enue in just a few weeks, and in sev­eral cases are look­ing like they might ex­ceed one mil­lion.

Pau Brunet is a film an­a­lyst who works for Box Of­fice and posts ar­ti­cles read by every­one in the sec­tor on his X page. The first thing he tells us is that there is no sin­gle fac­tor for un­der­stand­ing all the cir­cum­stances be­hind this un­prece­dented suc­cess.

Firstly, there is the re­turn of a sec­tor of es­tab­lished film­go­ers that has grad­u­ally found its way back to the cin­ema since the pan­demic, but, at the same time, the emer­gence of a new young au­di­ence that sees cin­ema as a recre­ational and cul­tural ac­tiv­ity be­yond screen­ing plat­forms. Brunet calls this the Filmin gen­er­a­tion (al­though in the US they are the Mubi gen­er­a­tion, the name of the equiv­a­lent film plat­form over there), which is a sec­tor of view­ers who were under 20 dur­ing the pan­demic and who have since de­vel­oped a a taste for going to the cin­ema.

Brunet be­lieves that the Yelmo and Cinesa cin­ema chains are suf­fer­ing the most, along with multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions that were nour­ished by block­busters for over a decade, such as the Mar­vel films. How­ever, re­cent films like Godzilla Kong and Ghost­busters have not at­tracted big au­di­ences, which is ag­gra­vated by the fact that much of the nat­ural au­di­ence for films like this ex­pects them to end up on the small screen. The fore­casts are not op­ti­mistic ei­ther, given that there are no big block­buster re­leases on the hori­zon, apart from Joker 2. That and the fact that the con­se­quence of the Hol­ly­wood ac­tors’ and screen­writ­ers’ strike, which caused pro­duc­tion to plum­met, has not yet been felt. The ef­fects of that will be felt later this year and through­out 2025, he says.

Brunet also be­lieves that in­de­pen­dent cin­e­mas have al­ways known how to swim against the tide and this “nat­ural state” has made them stronger. “They’ve got used to not mak­ing money and hav­ing to con­stantly rein­vent them­selves, look­ing for for­mu­las to at­tract au­di­ences. They’ve carved out a com­mu­nity by or­gan­is­ing ac­tiv­i­ties such as weekly pre­sen­ta­tions and de­bates, of­fer­ing view­ers an ex­pe­ri­ence be­yond the uniquely tech­ni­cal ap­peals of com­mer­cial cin­ema (Atmos or 3D sound, for ex­am­ple). This has al­lowed them to adapt and enjoy the sweet mo­ment they are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing,” he says.

Specif­i­cally, Brunet be­lieves that mea­sures such as se­nior pric­ing (2 euros on Tues­days) has been suc­cess­ful, at­tract­ing over a mil­lion view­ers. Com­pared to the year of Avatar 2, from No­vem­ber to March there was a 95% in­crease at the box of­fice on week­days. And of course, those who have ben­e­fited from these prof­its are mainly au­teur film­mak­ers and the cin­e­mas that show their films.