Why do few nations dominate European cinema so much?

It makes sense that if US film goers and critics could only access the films of certain nations easily then that is all they had to rate the films by. Unfortunately, this creates a problem for me as these ratings are all I have to go by and they are heavily weighted in favor of only a few nationalities. There is a chicken and egg problem that a lack of exposure in the US leads to lack of demand and the films never make it here. Most of the films of any nationality are of lower quality (the old 80/20 rule) and I can't simply go rummaging through a nation's film collection blindly.

It's an unfortunate state of affairs