Résumé
This paper examines the formation of cinematic canons in French film culture and film studies through the systematic marginalization of certain European national cinematographies. While French critical and academic discourse has long privileged the cinemas of major political and cultural powers such as Hollywood, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, German expressionism or Soviet cinema of the 1920s, other European film traditions remain largely absent from canonical narratives and teaching practices.Rather than conceiving the film canon as a neutral body of works, this contribution approaches canon formation as the product of institutional, critical, and geopolitical hierarchies. In France, cinematic importance is often assigned through international recognition and symbolic capital, notably via major festivals such as Cannes, as well as through co-production structures. European films that do not occupy a central position in these circuits tend to be perceived as marginal, secondary, or of limited relevance to broader film-historical narratives.Drawing on my doctoral research on Polish, Spanish, and Bulgarian cinematographies, the paper analyzes how these cinemas are selectively received and unevenly canonized in France. Polish cinema is often reduced to a few internationally awarded films, such as Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Iron. Spanish cinema, despite the sustained presence of filmmakers like Carlos Saura at major festivals, has never achieved canonical status comparable to Italian cinema. Bulgarian cinema remains entirely excluded from French film studies.A similar dynamic affects Swiss cinema, which is weakly disseminated and scarcely taught in France despite geographic proximity and shared linguistic spaces. The limited number of bilateral production agreements and distribution channels contributes to the low visibility of Swiss films, reinforcing their perception as peripheral.By foregrounding these cases, the paper demonstrates how French canon formation privileges circulation, institutional support, and symbolic recognition over sustained critical engagement. Rather than advocating a simple expansion of the canon, it interrogates the mechanisms through which certain European cinemas are rendered invisible, exposing the epistemological limits of cinematic knowledge production in France.