Karl Spoerri: Zurich can become German-language film hub

“There is a big need for German, Swiss and Austrian producers to meet and to co-produce,” he said.

That’s one reason this sixth festival is introducing the first Film Finance Forum in Zurich on Saturday. “We believe there is a lot of potential for producers here to get funding from Swiss investors, because Zurich is a banking capital,” Spoerri added. He hopes the festival and Finance Forum can provide “a good combination of the art scene and the money scene.”

He lamented that the Swiss industry is “not healthy” at the moment. “We have a couple of great actors but basically we have no great writers, also we don’t have a lot of great directors.”

mUnlike some other territories, he says “Money is not the problem” but financing needs to be more readily available to international co-productions.

Spoerri also supports the creation of a Zurich Film Office. “It’s really necessary to have a Film Office here. Many directors would like to shoot here because its untouched in a way,” he said, noting that a film like Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps had scenes set, but not shot, in Zurich. “We want the festival to help with awareness of filming here. And awareness that funding is becoming more open to European co-productions. That’s crucial.”

The Zurich native is a successful producer and financier through Millbank Pictures, which recently teamed with UK-based Jeremy Thomas of HanWay/RPC for David Cronenberg’s Freud-Jung story A Dangerous Method. His credits also include Oliver Stone’s W.

He says wearing two hats as filmmaker and festival director is not a problem. “There are a lot of synergies. You have such a good overview of what’s happening, its a good combination for me.”

Supporting German-langauge cinema is also a festival programming goal as well. “That’s our first goal, we want to be relevant for the German-speaking territories. After the Berlinale (each February), I think there is room in the second half of the year and I think we can fill in.”

“We have the German-langauge competition in addition to the international competition,” he continued. “You can’t just do Swiss film or Austrian film, the numbers aren’t there —but the combination from these three countries is great.”

The festival is seeking more attention internationally, and not just the kind of headlines it attracted last year with Roman Polanski’s surprise arrest. “If I go to LA or London, I talk about the festival, and people always know the Polanski story. Its not good PR but at least we are on the map for many people.”

He continued: “We are doing some things that makes the festival bigger. But we are still a young festival.”

This year’s festival budget is to CHF 4.1m, up from last year’s CHF 3.8m. Spoerri estimated that 80% of the money comees from private sponsors, about 5% from government backing, and the rest from ticket sales and donations.

About 150 international guests are attending ZFF this year. The number of tickets sold also rises each year.

In the future, Spoerri says he’d like to see the number of German-language premieres continue to rise, and have more industry experts come to Zurich to do business. He says adding a market in the future “would be great.”