Some of Europe’s biggest cinema names are sounding the alarm over the future of one of the continent’s most important film-support programs.

Juliette Binoche, Francis Ford Coppola, Joachim Trier, Ruben Östlund, Stellan Skarsgård, Sandra Hüller and Vicky Krieps are among more than 4,700 film professionals who have signed an open letter urging the European Union to protect and strengthen its 35-year-old MEDIA program, a fund that has helped thousands of European films reach screens over the decades.

The letter, titled “Europe needs cinema, Cinema needs Europe,” arrives as EU member states debate a sweeping new funding structure called AgoraEU. The proposal would place culture, media and civil society spending under one giant umbrella — a move that has rattled Europe’s independent film community.

At the center of the concern is what would happen to MEDIA. Under the current proposal, the program would be absorbed into a new Media+ strand, where support for film and audiovisual work would sit alongside funding for video games, news media and journalism. For filmmakers, producers and distributors, that raises a major question: would cinema still have a clear, protected place at the table?

Until now, MEDIA has operated within Creative Europe, with distinct funding strands and multi-year windows shaped over more than three decades. It has supported European stories from their earliest stages — script development and production — through to theatrical releases, online circulation, festivals, training and professional development.

On paper, the new AgoraEU plan looks well-funded. The European Commission has proposed setting aside €8.6 billion for the program under the EU’s 2028-2034 budget plan, while the European Parliament suggested in April that the figure be raised to €10.7 billion. But industry figures say the size of the pot is not the whole story. Without ring-fenced support or clearly defined goals for film and audiovisual work, they fear cinema could be diluted inside a much broader structure.

That is why the letter reads less like routine lobbying and more like a cultural SOS.

The signatories describe MEDIA as a vital engine for European storytelling, one that has helped independent production companies, festivals, cinemas and professionals across the industry. They call on the European Commission, European Parliament and member states to “future-proof the success and integrity” of the program and to reinforce its resources.

Their message is blunt: Europe’s shared values, democracy and soft power all depend, in part, on artistic creation.

The timing could hardly be more dramatic. EU member states are due to adopt a first position on the AgoraEU proposal on May 12 — the same day the 79th Cannes Film Festival opens. In other words, while stars walk the red carpet on the Croisette, European film professionals will also be watching Brussels.

The list of signatories reads like a Cannes guest book. It includes 2026 Palme d’Or contenders Rodrigo Sorogoyen with The Beloved, Lukas Dhont with Coward, Pawel Pawlikowski with Fatherland and Arthur Harari with The Unknown. Also backing the call are Ruben Östlund, Yorgos Lanthimos, Oliver Laxe, Michel Hazanavicius, Agnieszka Holland, Nadav Lapid, Laura Wandel, Ariane Labed, Agnès Jaoui, Clémence Poésy and Arnaud Desplechin, among many others.

Most of the supporters come from Europe, but the campaign has also travelled beyond the continent. Francis Ford Coppola is among those adding international weight to the appeal.

Cannes is usually a victory lap for MEDIA, whose backing can often be found behind European films in the official selection and parallel sections. This year, however, the mood may be more complicated. Alongside premieres, parties and standing ovations, one question is set to echo up and down the Croisette: what happens to European cinema if one of its strongest support systems loses its shape?

READ THE FULL LETTER BELOW:

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 AGORA EU 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.