2024-03-02 23:19:42
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Behind its excellent reputation, the famous film school has accounts in the red. The establishment is run at arm’s length by the National Cinema Center.
An establishment under perfusion. This is the image given in the first report from the Court of Auditors concerning La Fémis – one of the most prestigious film schools in the country – released this Friday. The Sages of rue Cambon have scrutinized the accounts from 2016 to 2022 and the educational model of the famous National School of Image and Sound Professions, from which François Ozon, Céline Sciamma and Bruno Dumont have notably graduated . “La Fémis is today called upon to take up a triple challenge: to complete its educational reform, regain economic sustainability and set an ambitious strategic horizon in view of the training needs of the sector”, note the experts. The fault of one “financial dependence on the National Center for Cinema and Animated Images (CNC) and the absence of efficient supervision”.
As a public industrial and commercial establishment (EPIC) under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture via the CNC, La Fémis has nevertheless by nature “vocation to ensure economic activity”, according to the Council of State, and must therefore balance its accounts. In fact, with results “almost constantly in deficit”, “the school is based on a model closer to that of an administrative establishment”, points the finger at the Court of Auditors. The 12 million operating budget of La Fémis is in fact more than 75% financed by financial assistance from the CNC. Its own resources are quite meager: the students of this partner establishment of the University of Paris Sciences et Lettres must pay tuition fees barely exceeding 400 euros per year, while each one costs nearly 50,000 euros annually. school according to the magistrates.
Result: school “does not generate sufficient self-financing capacity to finance the renewal of its investments (on average 500,000 euros annually)”. Either a serious risk of deterioration, and a subject of concern for the Sages of rue Cambon for whom “the lack of budgetary and financial visibility is a major and critical problem for this school […] locked into a short-sighted annual management logic”.
Deprived of a multi-annual strategy, even though “the vocation of a professional training organization requires, in order to respond, to adopt a long-term vision of the needs of a professional sector and of several generations of students”, The Fémis sails by sight. Hence the warning signal sounded by the Court of Auditors: “If the Ministry of Culture was not able to arbitrate, within the overall envelope of its resources, a dedicated increase in the employment ceiling in favor of La Fémis, the importance of the risks to which such Shortcomings expose the school to leading it to an internal redistribution of its human resources or to resorting, subject to additional funding from the CNC, to external assistance to upgrade its administrative and financial management.specifies the report.
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Management says “share the recommendations of the Court”. Only problem : “Its ambition to transform itself is, however, limited by heavy constraints: a public establishment, La Fémis cannot, like its private counterparts, count on the dynamics of tuition fees to improve its self-financing and its own resources efforts stagnate at 20 %»defends the school in a statement. Before appealing once once more to the generosity of the State: “to meet the ambitious challenges set out by the Court, it would therefore like to have its resources strengthened”. The same Court whose report notes that La Fémis “runs out of steam year following year in justifying its recurring needs to obtain additional subsidies”.
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