How much do we support Australian-made cinema? Maybe we should take a lesson from French cinema

Dr Ruari Elkington, QUT School of Creative Arts and Dr Tess Van Hemert, QUT School of Communication

As the 97th Academy Awards brings feature films and cinemagoing into focus, we should be asking serious questions about what kind of Australian stories we want to experience and where in the future they might thrive.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock and it will be back in cinemas in April. Will audiences flock to it? March, April and September this year bring major Australian films to our cinema screens with Spit, The Correspondent and Kangaroo respectively. While questions have long been asked about Australia’s appetite to show up and spend for local content at the cinemas, in other countries the success of homegrown films at the cinema is far more assured.

For French cinemagoers, 2024 was a remarkable year. For the first time in a decade, France’s most-watched film of the year was...French. More cinemagoers paid to see Un P’tit Truc en Plus than watched Disney’s Inside Out 2 (then the most successful animated film of all time). The box office share for French Films domestically in 2024 was 44 per cent, a 15 year high.

Closer to home in 2023, the box office take for Australian films in Australian cinemas was...two per cent.

When comparing the box office share for these national cinemas, it's important to note we are not comparing ‘apples with apples’. The French and Australian theatrical landscapes have huge disparities. Not least of which, the scale and marketing support for domestic titles in France, audience awareness and behaviour around those films, state and local support for theatrical exhibition and good old-fashioned French cultural protectionism and exceptionalism.

Releasing an Australian film in cinemas occurs in a wildly different environment. The theatrical release of homegrown cinema is shaped by very different industrial, cultural and economic conditions. And yet...two per cent? Really?

My QUT Digital Media Research Centre colleague Tess Van Hemert and I have spent the past four years researching the cultures and practices of Australian cinemagoers and how these experiences are shaped. As we marvel at the success of the French box office, and await Screen Australia 2024  data,  questions of how we might do better with our own screen stories need to be asked. Is a two per cent box office share for Australian films an underperformance, exceeding expectations or is this simply the new normal?

Before we start worrying too much about the success or otherwise of Australian films, we need to understand how we define, and then claim, the box office for Australian cinema. What constitutes an Australian film is necessarily defined for some stakeholders such as screen agencies or the ATO but may be far less clear to the ultimate stakeholders of Australian cinema - the audience. Dialogue in French cinema is unsurprisingly, spoken in French, a clear marker for an intended audience. Many of the success stories of Australian films at the Australian box office had far less recognisable hallmarks - The Lego Movie, Peter Rabbit 2, Better Man all looked and sounded either British or fantastically international. The obvious advantage of French cinema is that it is anchored in language, and in turn, a clear throughline to the audience.

Our research does indicate some unmet appetite for Australian stories at the cinema. In collaboration with Palace Cinemas in 2022, we ran the largest survey to date of Australian cinema movie club members. Over 10,000 cinemagoers responded to our survey and among the reflections on memorable moviegoing experiences, and a clear optimism for Australian cinemagoing (on a 1-10 scale the average score was 7.5), participants were asked what factors prevent them from attending the cinema more. While cost was cited as a factor (20%), the largest response at 57% indicated a ‘lack of films that interest me’. While more research is needed to dig into how Australian films may factor into that unmet need for more diverse programming, some qualitative responses point to recurring issues. When asked “What would you change about the moviegoing experience if you could”, responses included:

“For Australian films to have longer screening periods”

“A category that highlights local Australian films to international ones so therefore customers are more aware of what is local and what is not.

“I would like to see more Australian movies but they often have such a short release that if I cannot see them the week they come out, they are gone the next”.

“Australian release dates being less unpredictable, movies being in the cinema for longer so I don't have to hope I'm available on the one weekend a film I want to see is showing”.

“Longer runs for Australian content”

Or my personal favourite, which in seven short words manages to support domestic production whilst also throwing down the gauntlet to Hollywood hegemony:

“More Australian movies to see, less splatter”.

There is a bind here for local audiences for Australian films in cinemas. If those films don’t perform theatrically in the first few weeks, they will not stay on screens. These short ‘windows’ for Australian content reinforces the notion that Australian films are bound for streaming services and sets up the nagging question in the audience's mind, ‘should I just wait to watch at home?”. While cinemas cannot devote screens to films that are not performing, a growing audience perception that Australian films are ‘not theatrical’ and they don’t hang around in cinemas, is the kind of perception that contributes to a two per cent domestic box office. If audience awareness and attendant marketing of Australian films cannot create the ‘itch’ for the theatrical experience, we quickly move from “FOMO” to “MO”.

Are we asking the wrong question or being hung up on the wrong number? While two per cent may not appear high, $19.3 million for Australian film's box office share certainly looks more promising. The total Australian box office take was close to $1 billion in 2024, around a quarter of that ($224m) was taken up by just five films (Deadpool and Wolverine, Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, Dune: Part Two, Kung Fu Panda 4). Perhaps we should be celebrating our plucky homegrown box office success in the face of this handful of US blockbusters hoovering up the lion's share of cinema receipts. How can we even properly assess audience appetite for Australian films when these US tentpoles dominate to the degree they do? We can’t hope for some magic year where those blockbusters all vanish and Australian films are left to shine on their own.

But of course just such a year occurred very recently - and Australian films shone bright. In 2021, as COVID laid waste to Hollywood release calendars, US studios delayed their usual coordinated global marketing push. Australian titles suddenly became the feature attraction at Australian cinemas. This led to an almost 12 per cent box office share for Australian titles that year. For one unprecedented moment, four of the top five films at the box office were Australian: The Dry, Penguin Bloom, Long Story Short and High Ground. It’s clear Australian films do not compete on a level playing field with Hollywood product, but the COVID chapter does demonstrate that Australian audiences can find, and keep, Australian feature films in cinemas when given a chance.

Do Australian audiences know or care about the box office take of Australian cinema? How did we get here and what might it take to change this? It's not a simple question of 'better films' or ‘better marketing’. One quote from our research responding to the question “describe a memorable cinemagoing experience’ does highlight both the need for seeing Australian stories reflected back to us and the focus and immersion that cinemagoing can bring these stories:

“I was having a terrible year after having to place mum into care with dementia. I just needed some time to myself and was watching an Australian film with Jackie Weaver that was actually about dementia. It was so close to my heart and I got to sit there with tears streaming down my face and feeling that I was not alone in this sad journey. The movie and the quiet time actually lifted my spirits”.

Australia, in all our wonderful diversity, deserves to see Australian stories on screen. And we deserve to see these films with others, in the place we have returned to for well over a hundred years to experience stories together. It matters. So while Aussies such as Guy Pearce, Adam Elliot, Greig Fraser, Maya Gnyp and others are in the running for an Oscar on March 3, let’s get behind new Australian releases like Spit (opening March 6) and see if 2025 can’t be a banner year for Australian cinema.