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

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 datasets, including festival programming information from the Cinando platform of the Cannes Film Market, covering more than 30,000 screenings of over 20,000 films in almost 600 festivals across the world over a decade. It is shown that while the festival screen is indeed dominated by films from large affluent countries, the bias is nevertheless not fully proportional to the large demographic and economic disparities across the world, and that several small countries perform better than expected. It is further analyzed via computational simulations how much including films from smaller countries contributes to cultural diversity, and how countries differ in cultural "trade balance" dynamics, revealing differences between net exporters and importers of festival films. This research underscores the importance of balanced representation in film festivals and the public value of increasing cultural diversity. The data-driven insights and approaches to quantitative festival program and cultural event analytics are hoped to be useful for both the academic community as well as film festival organizers and policymakers aiming to foster more inclusive and diverse cultural landscapes.