  This study analyzes how economic, demographic, and geographic factors predict
the representation of different countries in the global film festival circuit.
It relies on the combination of several open access datasets, including
festival programming information from the Cinando platform of the Cannes Film
Market, covering more than 30,000 screenings of over 20,000 films in almost 600
festivals across the world over a decade. It is shown that while the festival
screen is indeed dominated by films from large affluent countries, the bias is
nevertheless not fully proportional to the large demographic and economic
disparities across the world, and that several small countries perform better
than expected. It is further analyzed via computational simulations how much
including films from smaller countries contributes to cultural diversity, and
how countries differ in cultural "trade balance" dynamics, revealing
differences between net exporters and importers of festival films. This
research underscores the importance of balanced representation in film
festivals and the public value of increasing cultural diversity. The
data-driven insights and approaches to quantitative festival program and
cultural event analytics are hoped to be useful for both the academic community
as well as film festival organizers and policymakers aiming to foster more
inclusive and diverse cultural landscapes.
