France has long been a go-to country for non-fiction producers looking for financial options beyond those available at studios and broadcasters. The French government is very supportive of its film industry, but interested producers take note: your project will need to increase the French elements to benefit from the numerous government-appointed funds for films.

French film and television projects have many avenues from which to draw money, most notably from the Centre National de la Cinematographie, or CNC. The CNC falls under the Ministry of Culture, but the money it uses to fund projects comes from the market. While the CNC contributes 50% of the budget when French participation in the project is higher than 80%, the project must have 30% of the final cost financed by French participants in order to be considered at all. For television productions, the CNC has an initiative called COSIP. COSIP's money comes from the broadcasters.

One producer broke down a typical coproduction budget of €400,000 (US$591,000): at least €100,000 ($148,000) would come from the French broadcaster, and an additional €36,000 ($53,000) would be from the CNC. The top-up financing would come from different organizations, such as regional funds (of which France has many), and 30% would need to be found outside of the country with international partners.

Coproductions are so frequent with France that there are agreements in place with 44 countries (not including the us or Japan). For these international copros to access CNC funds, they must understand the somewhat complicated requirements that allocate points based on such things as crew nationality and locations. The higher the points, the more likely it is filmmakers will receive more funding from the cnc. However, this ranges with each individual project, and depends on the total budget of the program.

The CNC also has a credit system in place, whereby revenue from past projects is counted as a credit for the next project. These automatic subsidies, called Le Compte de Soutien, give the producer's next film a revenue share from each ticket sold from their last, as well as money from DVD and TV sales. This credit is also determined by the amount of French crew, locations and actors.

According to 2006 numbers, CNC accounted for an average of 18.2% of individual documentary budgets. For their part, French broadcasters stepped in to finance an average of 46.3%. While French broadcasters are required to give a minimum of 25% of the financing to a project, it's more likely that broadcasters will contribute around 35% to 50% of the budget for bigger, landmark projects.

Some of those broadcasters had a tumultuous 2005, when the heads of documentaries at France 2, 3 and 5 changed almost simultaneously. But two years later the dust has settled, and new documentary slots have been announced by those broadcasters.

For its part, France 5 is commissioning environmentally themed projects, with 25 hours devoted to that genre. While France 5 has the most hours dedicated to non-fiction fare, France 3 and 2 are attempting to close the gap with more non-fiction programming.