Cannes Market Forecasts Attendance Rise For 2024 As It Rolls Out New Events Around Remakes, Asian IP & AI

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The Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film is gearing up for a 6% hike in attendance with numbers expected to hit close to 15,000 participants, according to projections revealed by executive director Guillaume Esmiol in the run-up to its opening Tuesday. “We’ll only have the exact number at the end of the market but for now we’re looking at an increase of more than 6%,” predicts Esmiol, on the basis of a rise in registrations ahead of the market kickoff. “Last year we announced the record-breaking attendance of just over 14,000 attendees.

I expect we’re going to break that record again to be not far off 15,000.” Around 4,000 feature films and projects from 140 territories will be on offer, with screening staking place in 33 venues, while the market will also host 200 different events, including 70 conferences, across its nine days running from May 14 to 22.

While the AFM, Toronto and even the Berlinale’s European Film Market have struggled to return to pre-pandemic levels of attendance, Cannes has gone from strength to strength. “After the pandemic, we were asking whether people would come back to the market.

Now it’s a question of how we are going to welcome all these people?,” says Esmiol, who is in his second edition running the market solo, having succeeded Jérome Paillard last year.