VIVRE SA VILLE

Cannes, Monaco and Nice are the film industry's most popular Côte d’Azur locations, with advertising and television series being equally important to the Riviera's audiovisual industry.

From early on the Côte d’Azur attracted film directors and producers, for good reason: a Mediterranean coastline of beaches, palatial hotels, casinos and luxury villas plus a back country dotted with picturesque villages. Perfect settings for escapism, glamour and action from crime investigations to hair-raising car chases. Plus there's no lack of professionals, or indeed extras keeping up with the castings on social media, although naturally filming days and locations are kept secret so as not to spoil plots and, in the case of big international productions, to avoid hordes of fans turning up. Recent releases testify to our region's popularity, whether set entirely in the Alpes-Maritimes – Paper Flags made by Nathan Ambrosioni when he was just 18; Brillantissime shot in Nice with the marvellous Michèle Laroque – or including scenes filmed here, e.g. Nicky Larson and Cupid's Perfume, Promise at Dawn, A Bag of Marbles, Rock’n Roll with Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard, Johnny English III starring Rowan Atkinson's bumbling secret agent, Pitch Perfect 3 continuing the Bellas' musical adventures, Fifty Shades Freed the honeymoon, and any number of other French, European and American feature films.

Cannes and the Islands
“We work mainly from April to November, and it's not just the location in general that attracts cinematographic projects but also the town's corporate events,” explains scriptwriter and assistant director Paul Vallespi. In addition to the Croisette, the Carlton Hotel and the upmarket La Californie district, Cannes's big pull is the International Film Festival whose world-famous red carpet featured in Fear City (1994) and, most notably, the opening scene of Brian de Palma's Femme Fatale (2005). More recently, Claire's Camera, starring Isabelle Huppert as a teacher and writer, was filmed entirely during the 2016 Cannes Festival. On another level, for L’Oréal the Festival represents a celebrity opportunity to gather its muses and models together and shoot some classy promotional material. Advertising in general accounts for a third of Riviera film shoots, often on very generous budgets.

A legendary casino
The other major event on the Riviera's filming calendar is Monaco's Formula One Grand Prix, which draws top international brands of luxury goods, alcoholic beverages and cars – Guinness, Heineken, Johnny Walker, Jaguar, Austin Mini.... A regular star in adverts is Monaco resident Novak Djokovic, the world's number one tennis player. The Principality's Place du Casino, Rock, Hôtel de Paris, Hôtel Hermitage and Larvotto Beach are favourite locations, think GoldenEye (1995), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), Coco (2009), Iron Man 2 (2010), Heartbreaker (2010) and Grace of Monaco (2014) with Nicole Kidman in the title role. The TV series The Bold and the Beautiful even filmed here during the 56th Television Festival!

Nissa la Bella and the back country
“Feature-film shoots usually come for a few days whereas series can be a long-term commitment,” points out Stéphanie Gac of the Alpes-Maritimes Côte d’Azur Film Commission. So 14 episodes of the TV crime series Research Unit generate an average of 140 days of filming a year; the production relocated to Grasse from Bordeaux after seven seasons, because of the weather. And since 2017 the Côte d’Azur has been the setting for Irish director Neil Jordan's TV series Riviera broadcast on the UK's Sky Atlantic channel and France's SFR Play; season 1 brought some €20 million into the region in six months for accommodation, transport, equipment hire, human resources and technical staff. In Nice its trucks generally park up around the harbour and at the Victorine studios, complete with a small town's worth of professions: makeup, hair styling, set dressing, electronics, photography, production, administration, etc… totalling some 80 people, plus 50-odd actors and on occasion up to 1000 extras! The big bonus is that it's recurrent, with two seasons of Riviera already in the can and everyone naturally hoping for a third. Especially popular with directors are the Promenade des Anglais with the Negresco and Nice Airport plus Cap d’Antibes from Belles Rives to Villa Eilenroc, although other locations find favour too: Cagnes-sur-Mer race course, the Château de Mandelieu la Napoule, the Golf de Mougins.... Then there are the adverts filmed by drone up on the Col de Vence and the one-off programmes shot in Saint-Paul de Vence, the ski resorts and the Mercantour. All in all, a gamut of resources in skills and locations that boosts the sector's growth. Not just pretty backdrops!

* Présidée par David Lisnard, maire de Cannes, et vice-présidée par Jean-Pierre Savarino, président de la CCI Nice Côte d’Azur.

Par Tanja Stojanov