Common thread

common thread 2025 : ’AUX ARCS, CITOYENS !’

Each year, we invite a theme that runs through the entire festival, both in our programming and in our professional events. This is our way of inviting social issues to the festival, addressing them through the prism of cinema.

After exploring topics such as gender equality in cinema, ecological transition, mental health and youth, we will now turn our attention to the relationship between cinema and democracy.

This common thread will be expressed through films related to our theme, which will carry the label ‘Déplacer les Montagnes’ (Moving Mountains), film debates and discussions around these films with experts and leading observers, the organisation of a night in a chalet on the theme of ‘cinema enters the resistance’ and panels as part of our professional events on topics related to democracy.

the stakeholders 2025

This year, we will be joined by Cyril Dion, writer, director, poet and environmental activist, who will be our guest to discuss this theme.

In 2014, he wrote and co-directed, with Mélanie Laurent, the film Demain. César Award for Best Documentary in 2015. In 2017, he published Petit manuel de résistance contemporaine (A Short Handbook of Contemporary Resistance) with Actes Sud. He is one of the guarantors of the Citizens' Climate Convention. In 2021, he directed the film Animal. It is part of the temporary section ‘Cinema for the Climate’ at the 2021 Festival de Cannes. In 2022, he wrote and starred in the three parts of the series Un Monde Nouveau (A New World) broadcast on Arte and directed by Thierry Robert.

In May 2024, his new collection of poetry, La route sans fin (The Endless Road), is published by Éditions du Castor Astral. In 2025, he releases his new book, La lutte enchantée: Comment garder espoir (et lutter!) dans un monde qui bascule (The Enchanted Struggle: How to Keep Hope (and Fight!) in a World in Turmoil), published by Actes Sud.

Marc Lazar, professor emeritus of history and political sociology at Sciences Po (Paris), will also be present at the Arcs Film Festival. Holder of the Chair in ‘Franco-Italian Relations for Europe’ at LUISS University in Rome, he is a specialist in European left-wing politics, French and Italian politics after the Second World War, and contemporary populism.

In recent years, he has published Histoire du Parti communiste français (Paris, PUF, 2022), Left. Crisis and Challenges of the European Left, end of Twentieth Century-2020s (Milan, Feltrinelli, 2024), Pour l'amour du peuple. Histoire du populisme en France, XIX-XXIème siècle (Gallimard, 2025).

Léna Mauger was a reporter and then editor-in-chief of the magazines XXI and 6Mois. She has worked in Georgia, the Balkans and Afghanistan. Director of the non-fiction collection at Stock, she is the co-author with Stéphane Remael of the investigative book Les évaporés du Japon (Les Arènes, 2014, reissued in 2025). She co-founded the magazine Kometa after Russia's invasion of Ukraine to report on the changing world.

Adrien Rivierre is an author and journalist. He publishes in-depth interviews with artists at Allary Editions. He is the founder of Résonances, a media outlet that brings artists into dialogue with our times through written interviews and conferences in cultural institutions. He runs two companies at the crossroads of storytelling, writing and public speaking.

The common thread in debate

It's become a ritual: offering a group a long break in an isolated chalet reached by snowshoes, to reflect in depth on a theme linked to the year's theme.

Once again this year, a night in a chalet will be dedicated to the subject: a group of a dozen professionals, directors, producers, distributors, exhibitors, institutional representatives, etc., will have one night to reflect together on the theme: “Cinema in resistance”: at a time when democracy is faltering and obscurantism is on the rise throughout the world, particularly in Europe, how can cinema continue to film, screen, and tell the story of our world? In short, how can it join the resistance?

A common thread for all audiences

Programme for the general public and schools:

This common thread will be expressed through films linked to our theme. We will be organising film debates around these films with film-makers and other people who can shed light on the subject. One will be aimed at the general public, and the other will focus more on schoolchildren, who will be involved in the discussions.

In-depth work is being done in advance of the festival with the school district of Bourg Saint Maurice, our privileged partner, to involve them and give them a special role in this edition.

For professionals:

Panels will be held during will be held during our professional events

• as part of Industry Village: panel co-organised with the European Producers Club on the future of European cultural policies; and panel on ‘Producing despite censorship’;
• as part of the Summit: workshop on ‘How to support the distribution and exploitation of socially engaged films?’

Common thread 2024 ’Our futures: youth and global challenges’

Last year, the central theme was ‘Our futures: young people and global challenges’, focusing on the relationship between young people and the future and its challenges. We chose the theme of young people because we believe it touches on many social issues: climate change, changes in the world of work, geopolitical upheavals... all challenges that today's young people will have to face.

We were fortunate to welcome Salomé Saqué, a journalist specialising in youth issues and author of an investigative book on the subject, entitled Sois jeune et tais-toi (Be young and shut up).