Gaëtan Bruel, 36, was named president of the French National Center of Cinema and Animated Pictures (CNC), a major funder of French cinema, by the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, February 5. The current chief of staff to Minister of Culture Rachida Dati was preferred to Olivier Henrard, the acting head of the establishment since Dominique Boutonnat resigned after being sentenced in 2024 to one year in prison and a suspended sentence of two years for sexually assaulting his godson in August 2020. (He has appealed.)

Before Bruel's arrival at the Culture Ministry, he had won the confidence of the cultural world from the outside, from ministerial posts where culture was not the core business. After François Hollande's victory in the 2012 presidential election, the young graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure applied for a position in the staff of Jean-Yves Le Drian, then defense minister, where he became his speechwriter. He quickly made himself indispensable and broadened his scope.

Inspired by the contracts set up between the DGSE, France's foreign intelligence agency, and the producers of the Canal+ series The Bureau, in 2016 he created the Cinema and Creative Industries Mission, the contact point for all military-related film, video game and comic book projects. That same year, he left the secrecy of the cabinets to manage the Panthéon and the Arc de Triomphe monuments. It was here that he struck up a close working relationship with Philippe Bélaval, then president of the National Monuments Center (CMN).

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