While Balsan continued to act in small roles in friends' films (he played a pirate in Jacques Rivette's Noroit (1976)), his interest turned to production.
During the 1980s, Balsan lent not only his screen presence to Samuel Fuller for the then-expatriated director's French-language film Les Voleurs de la nuit (Thieves After Dark) (1984) but his Paris apartment as well.
As a patron of France's women filmmakers, Balsan facilitated a group that included Claire Denis, Sabine Franel, Brigitte Roüan, and Sandrine Veysset.
Later that year, Balsan's production Le Grand Voyage (2004) won its director, Moroccan émigré Ismaël Ferroukhi, a best first feature prize at the 2004 Venice Film Festival.
Balsan, who would typically enlist European television and business entities to co-finance Arab region-produced works, was cited by Al-Ahram Weekly's Hani Mustafa for being vulnerable to an investor-friendly system that tends to compromise the stories told in Middle-Eastern films.