Matthijs Wouter Knol, CEO of the European Film Academy, tells Geoffrey Macnab about some of the major changes and year-round initiatives he is planning for the organisation.
It is just over a year since Dutch-born, Berlin-based Matthijs Wouter Knol took over as CEO and director of the European Film Academy (EFA). The former director of the European Film Market (EFM), Wouter Knol has only been in charge for a short time and joined in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. But it is clear he is planning major changes at the organisation, which was established in 1989.
“I think we should step away from just focusing on the awards show that we have,” the CEO suggests. “A European film academy has to celebrate the idea of European films in its totality, which includes films that won last year or 10 years ago or never won something because the Academy did not exist [pre-1989].”
Wouter Knol wants more emphasis placed on the culture and heritage of European cinema. He is promising more “round-the-year events” and says the EFA will now start to “work much more intensively with film museums, cinematheques and film archives”.
One idea is to pay more attention to important European film sites, places like the Baltic Sea island Faro where Ingmar Bergman lived and worked in the latter part of his life, or the famous steps in Odessa linked to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent Soviet classic Battleship Potemkin. He talks of building a “huge network of those sites” within the next five to 10 years.
“And we are talking about much more activities to include older classics of European films into the programmes we offer, also for younger audiences,” Wouter Knol continues. He sees part of his mandate as “creating possibilities for younger audiences to discover European film”.
The EFA, which is active in 52 territories including Israel and Palestine, already has its Young Audience Award, which has been in existence for a decade but the plan now is to build further European film clubs for younger cinephiles. Wouter Knol and his team are talking about building a Europe-wide platform through which young film lovers can watch films. This will be run along similar lines to the UK’s BFI-backed educational initiative Into Film Clubs.
As for the European Film Awards themselves, the EFA boss is promising changes there, too. It sometimes seems that the awards— which take place nine or 10 months after the Oscars — are an afterthought rather than being at the front of awards discussions.
“We should absolutely have the ambition of putting ourselves more into being a launchpad for films at the beginning of awards season,” suggests Wouter Knol, who sees the December dates as potentially giving an opportunity to be ahead of the other awards events. He also wants the European Film Awards to celebrate the diversity of European cinema.
“It’s not in the interest of the EFA to award films that feel like old news,” he states. He points out, though, that certain titles, such as Danish animated documentary Flee, have been able to use EFA success to help with subsequent Oscar campaigns (Flee won both the European animated feature and European documentary feature prizes at the awards in December).
Is there any thought of changing the awards dates? Wouter Knol parries the question. “That remains to be seen. It’s too early to say.”
Beyond deal-making
Ask Wouter Knol what he expects from a second online European Film Market (EFM), and he suggests the organisers who succeeded him will have learned from last year’s event, which went “astonishingly well”. Wouter Knol welcomes the EFM’s willingness to look beyond deal-making. “What I like about the market is the side programme of events, meetings and a framework which is not only about the hard sales but also about what the industry is doing,” he reflects.
During the pandemic, the industry has learned that “the epicentre of the deal-making doesn’t necessarily have to be physical film markets anymore. That is a reality happening in front of our eyes.” Nonetheless, Wouter Knol believes that markets still have a crucial role. They remain key places for networking, sharing knowledge and marketing films as well as for signing deal memos.
Events like the EFM and Cannes Marché are also important for the collective identity of the European film business. This is where the EFA comes in. When the organisation was founded under its first president Ingmar Bergman, its remit was “to advance the interests of the European film industry”.
More than 30 years on, as the industry tries to cope both with the pandemic and rapidly changing business models, the Academy is still pursuing the same basic goals. “The necessity identified by the founders of the EFA in 1989 has not really changed,” Wouter Knol reflects.
The same challenge remains to ensure European films are readily available, albeit now on the streaming platforms as well as in cinemas. “What has changed is obviously that nowadays we are talking of a much larger understanding of what is European than 35 years ago,” he says.
Since the EFA was established, a huge network has been put in place for training and supporting European filmmakers as well as for promoting their work beyond European borders. Bergman was joined by 40 filmmakers when the Academy was founded. Wouter Knol points to the way the organisation has mushroomed since then: “We have well over 4,000 [members] and are still growing.” And, yes, he is looking to “diversify the membership of the Academy. At the moment, we would not score very high when you look at the diversity of the membership.”
As Europe emerges from the pandemic, the EFA is planning many of its 2022 activities for the second part of the year. Prior to the awards, which are set to take place in Reykjavik in December, there will be a “month of European film” in cities all over Europe — and with accompanying screenings on streaming platforms.
“In modern times that question of preserving, defending and supporting European film needs to be done on a larger scale than has been done before,” he concludes.
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