Its main purpose is to bring together the different players from the audiovisual industry to make connections and discuss business opportunities such as collaborations and co-productions, financing, and distribution.

In 1995, Marché du Film was headed by Jérôme Paillard, a former professional oboist, sound engineer, and finance director of the Erato Disques label.

[10] Although generally there is no public disclosure of sums and a significant number of agreements take place behind the scenes, Jérôme Payard estimates the total volume of deals made during the film market to be in the range of US$600 million to US$1 billion.

[11] In 2016, 11,900 participants registered for the film market, with China almost catching up with the US and France and the UK in terms of the percentage of attendees.

[10] Participants noted an increasing trend in the number of deals for films that are at a very early stage of completion: projects with a finished script, an approved director and actors and little footage are being sold.

[12] Due to the quarantine imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Marché du Film 2020 ran online via a video-on-demand platform partnership between Cinando and Shift72.

[14] In 2021, one of the biggest deals was STX's $75m purchase of global distribution rights to Gerard Butler's Greenland sequel.

The total number of participants in 2022 was 12,000, with another 13 joining the event online,[17] but in general there has been a decline in comparison to the pre-COVID days.

The beach at Palace of Festivals and Congresses became a plaza dedicated to new film trends: VR, streaming, and machine learning.

[17] The biggest deal announced was Netflix's purchase of North American distribution rights to Todd Haynes' drama May December.

impACT is a joint initiative of Microsoft and the Marché du Film, launched to promote ethics, inclusion, representation and social responsibility in cinema industry.