Running a film festival is always a challenge. But several headwinds have combined into something of a perfect storm for festivals in 2025.
Number one is money. High inflation has driven up costs — increasing prices for staff through to accommodation and transport. The cost-of-living crisis and the financial response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also means supporting cultural events like film festivals has started to fall down the list of priorities for many governments.
In Switzerland for example, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation is slashing its support of cultural events, including film festivals, citing the future reconstruction of Ukraine as the reason.
Second, putting on a film festival is ever more complex. Ticketing platforms have to work as smoothly as those of consumer giants such as Netflix or easyJet. And to remain relevant, many festivals have expanded so they are now year-round operations, with all the infrastructure that requires. The decline of traditional media, with its extensive arts pages and film reviews, also means festivals have had to expand their communication and digital outreach.
Third, cinemagoing has still not recovered from the pandemic. Younger audiences are challenging to attract — not only are they cost-conscious, but many other events and digital media are competing for their time and money.
Clare Stewart, the managing director of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) who has previously run Sheffield DocFest and the London and Sydney film festivals, says the climate for such events is “much more challenging than anything I’ve ever experienced in my career”.
Rotterdam is relatively fortunate: its overall budget rose slightly from $9.4m (€9.1m) last year to around $9.7m (€9.4m) this year, despite a volatile climate for cultural funding in the Netherlands. The country’s right-wing coalition government last year announced a round of significant budget cuts for cultural organisations in a bid to address fiscal challenges. Meanwhile, the city of Utrecht withdrew its subsidies for the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) last summer.
Rotterdam has secured a four-year funding settlement from the Dutch government and the city of Rotterdam covering its 2026-29 editions. “Our subsidies are staying the same or increasing marginally in line with indexation,” says Stewart.
The festival has also historically received strong support from philanthropic foundations in the Netherlands. But, because of reductions in government and municipal funding, these foundations are now receiving many more applications. As a result, there is a renewed focus on generating more revenue from sponsors and ticket sales, while carefully managing the size of the festival and the resources required to stage it.
Rotterdam and other major Dutch festivals are also working together on a fair-pay scheme that is set to be implemented in the next 18 months. “That will also have some reverberations in terms of our scale,” says Stewart.
The Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) is grappling with similar issues. The impact of inflation is “huge”, says executive director Krystof Mucha. “The biggest part of our spending is hotels, venues, technical support, flights and employees — and the costs of all are increasing.”
The expense of running the July festival has grown from $6.2m (€6m) to $8.3m (€8m) since the pandemic, he explains. To plug the gaps, the festival has managed to increase funding from sponsors and has expanded its activities so it is more of a year-round proposition.
A high proportion — 70% — of Karlovy Vary’s revenues now come from sponsors, with 25% from public funding and 5% from ticket sales. “We have loyal and trusted sponsors. Some of them have been with us for 15-20 years, and see KVIFF as a priority. When it is time to sign new contracts, we try to take account of inflation within it,” says Mucha.
By contrast, the festival has sought to keep ticket prices low to continue attracting young audiences.
Meanwhile, Karlovy Vary has partnered with the Czech Philharmonic for Variations, a two-day film and music event in November. It organises the Pragueshorts film festival, as well as the KVIFF Classics showcase in Prague, a subscription programme — Vary at Your Cinema — at 70 Czech cinemas and VoD platform KVIFF.TV.
Navigating cuts
Locarno Film Festival CEO Raphael Brunschwig says the Swiss festival is evolving in an effort to answer the question: “How can you make sure you remain relevant in a world where cinema has a different position than 10-15 years ago?”
The festival’s attendance has remained constant at about 150,000-170,000, despite the general fallback in cinemagoing since the pandemic.
Brunschwig says the changing media landscape means the festival “has had to strengthen our position as a media company by focusing on producing content” to reach existing and new audiences across digital platforms (the fest’s YouTube views hit 4.1 million in 2024 and its podcast Locarno Meets has more than 10 million views on the festival’s channels).
Locarno has set up media-literacy programmes to cultivate the audiences and professionals of tomorrow with Locarno Kids and Locarno Academy, and is making the festival more accessible to a younger creative community with Basecamp. It also has 1,900 film professionals attending its industry initiative Locarno Pro each year. “We have grown horizontally to be sure we have an audience for the future,” says Brunschwig.
However, the Swiss government’s cultural cuts have resulted in a hefty 25% reduction in the budget of Locarno’s industry-focused talent-development programme Open Doors for 2025. The funding will be completely cut by 2029, in a move that also impacts Switzerland’s Visions du Reel.
Connected community
Locarno is a small town; attracting more people to its 11-day event is a challenge. The festival’s strategy is to transform from being an event-centric organisation to a year-round connected community, says Brunschwig. It now has a variety of initiatives such as a short-film digital platform, travelling retrospectives, and the knowledge-sharing and networking platform Open Doors ToolBox — and screens selected films around the world at spin-off events.
All this has led to greater organisational complexity and cost. Locarno’s year-round staff numbers have grown from 20 to around 40. Its annual budget has risen from $14.5m (€14m) pre-pandemic to $18.6m (€18m) in 2024. Some 39% of this comes from public subsidies, while 36% is from private sponsors and the remaining 25% from tickets, merchandise and hospitality packages.
Locarno is experiencing its strongest revenue growth from private sponsor funding, but attracting sponsors has become more complicated. Partners do not just want to put their name to a festival. Many seek ‘value alignment’ and want to create common projects together. On the plus side, this allows a festival to offer additional events, but it adds to the complexity and cost.
“You have to work way more for the money you receive,” notes Brunschwig. “At a certain point, we had to hire a controller and then a CFO to handle everything.”
Brunschwig says Locarno’s ambition is to “fuel its growth by increasing its international relevance and attracting global partners”. Notably, the festival has powerful door-openers working at a senior level: billionaire philanthropist Maja Hoffmann took over as president in 2023, while former Venice Biennale president Roberto Cicutto joined the board last year.
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