Réalisateurs et Réalisatrices de Films (RRF)
The French union representing film directors, advocating for directors' economic rights, equitable remuneration, and professional status within France's strong authorship rights tradition.
Overview
The Réalisateurs et Réalisatrices de Films (RRF) is the French union representing film directors, founded in 1986. The RRF operates as a trade union specifically focused on the economic rights of French directors -- advocating for equitable remuneration, fair contract terms, and the application of France's strong droit d'auteur (author's right) framework that provides directors with ongoing economic participation in the exploitation of their films. The RRF works alongside the Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF), which focuses more on cultural and creative advocacy, and together the two organizations cover the full range of professional interests of French directors.
France's legal framework for film directors is among the most protective in the world. The Code de la Propriété Intellectuelle establishes directors as co-authors of audiovisual works, with inalienable moral rights and the right to equitable remuneration from all forms of exploitation. Remuneration rights are managed collectively through the collecting societies -- principally the SACD (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques) for French-language film and the SCAM (Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia) for documentary -- which collect and distribute royalties from television broadcasting, streaming, and other forms of secondary exploitation.
Remuneration Rights and Collecting Societies
The interaction between the RRF's advocacy for individual contract terms and the collecting societies' management of collective remuneration rights is central to understanding how French directors are compensated across the life of their films. When a French film is broadcast on French television, streamed on a French or European platform, shown in French cinemas, or licensed internationally, royalties flow through the collecting societies back to the director (and screenwriter, as co-author).
For French directors, the combination of negotiated initial fees and ongoing collecting society royalties provides a compensation structure that generates continuing income from successful films over years and decades. The RRF advocates for remuneration rates in individual contracts that reflect this long-term exploitation value and monitors industry practices that seek to minimize directors' economic participation.
RRF and French Film Policy
France's film production is funded through a distinctive system centered on the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée), which collects levies from cinema ticket sales, television broadcasting, and streaming platforms and redistributes them as grants, advances, and automatic aid to French film production. This system -- among the most sophisticated film funding mechanisms in the world -- reflects France's commitment to cinema as cultural expression and economic activity.
The RRF engages with the CNC, the Ministry of Culture, and European institutions on policy issues that affect director remuneration and creative autonomy within the French-funded system. The ongoing discussions around streaming platform contributions to French film funding -- particularly following EU requirements for streaming platforms to invest in local content -- are among the RRF's current advocacy priorities.
What Filmmakers Should Know
For international co-productions with France, the French authorship framework creates contractual and financial obligations toward French directors that differ significantly from work-for-hire frameworks. French directors working on co-productions retain their French copyright entitlements and collecting society membership, which generates remuneration rights that continue after the production is completed. Understanding these rights before finalizing co-production agreements prevents structural misalignments in how director compensation is managed.
For French directors, RRF membership provides union representation in contract negotiations, legal support, and connection to the European advocacy network that the union participates in through FERA.
See Also
For the cultural advocacy counterpart of the RRF, see Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF) in this directory. For the European directors federation the RRF participates in, see FERA in this directory.
