Socioeconomic factors of national representation in the global film festival circuit: skewed toward the large and wealthy, but small countries can beat the odds

Abstract This study analyzes how economic, demographic, and geographic factors predict the representation of different countries in the global film festival circuit. It relies on the combination of several open-access databases, including festival programming information from the Cinando platform of the Cannes Film Market. The dataset consists of over 20,000 unique films from almost 600 festivals across the world over a decade, a total of more than 30,000 film festival entries. It is shown that while films from large affluent countries indeed dominate the festival screen, the bias is nevertheless not fully proportional to the large demographic and economic worldwide disparities and that several smaller countries perform better than expected. Further computational simulations demonstrate how much including films from smaller countries contributes to cultural diversity, and how countries vary in cultural “trade balance” dynamics, revealing differences between net exporters and importers of festival films. This research underscores the importance of representation in film festivals and the public value of increasing cultural diversity. The data-driven insights and quantitative approaches to festival programming and cultural event analytics should be useful for both the academic community as well as film festival organizers and policymakers aiming to foster more inclusive and diverse cultural landscapes.