Filmfest Hamburg’s Industry Days brings together the local industry with colleagues from throughout Germany and the international industry.
The programme of keynotes, panels, and workshops kicks off on October 2 with a keynote speech by one of Germany’s most prolific directors, Dominik Graf, known for features such as Fabian: Going To The Dogs and Beloved Sisters. It will be followed by discussions about the situation of emerging talents in Germany and the initiatives being developed to promote this up-and-coming generation of filmmakers.
For the second year running, the Filmfest is hosting the #Atelier23 closed format to provide a creative forum for dialogue between film students from Germany and international debutant filmmakers whose films are screening in the festival programme. Over three days, the participants will have access to exclusive screenings of the filmmakers’ films followed by Q&As with the directors at Studio Funk’s Mischkino.
In addition, the film students drawn from film academies throughout Germany will meet a delegate from Cannes’ Critics’ Week to hear about the challenges and opportunities facing film school graduates when they seek to take the step to having their films shown at an A category festival.
Diversity, intersectionality and antidiscrimination in film will be the focus of the Industry Days events on October 3 where filmmakers and the initiators of campaigns on these topics will discuss the potential for their recommendations being translated into reality. One campaign is ’Let’s Change the Picture’ by the online magazine Palais F*luxx which calls for film and television to update its representations of older women.
There will also be apitching session organised by ProQuote Film which will see women authors presenting story ideas in which women over 67 are the main characters and aspects of intersectionality are taken into account, with the German branch of Women in Film and Television (WIFT) then hosting a dialogue with the audience about “Representations of Violence against Women in Film”.
Green storytelling will be in the spotlight with keynotes by climate fiction consultant Nicole Zabel-Wasmuth and screenwriter Silke Zertz on how to create more awareness for such issues as environmental protection and climate change through films and series.
A roundtable discussion chaired by Lars Jessen, the director of Mittagstunde, will follow, with actor-director Charly Hübner and producer Andrea Schütte of Hamburg-based Tamtam Film joining the two keynote speakers.
There will also be a series of discussions about working with the US streamers and how producers can navigate the ‘buy-out’ deals preferred by the platforms. hosted by the MOIN film fund and the Graef, Unverzagt and Von Have Fey media firms. This event will open with a keynote by Alexandra Lebret of the European Producers Club who will give an overview of existing practices in other European countries.
Lisa Giehl, head of public policy at Leonine Studios will then moderate a discussion on the potential for fairer conditions for streaming productions enabling producers to retain some rights.
Giehl will be joined by producer Bettina Brokemper of Cologne-based Heimatfilm, Sascha Gottschalck of SevenOne Entertainment and Jan Ole Püschel of the federal commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) for discussions on reforms to the German Film Law.
Industry Days will close with the fourth edition of the one-day Explorer Conference, the full line-up for which will be revealed in the coming days.
This year will see Sweden as a guest country for the first time in the industry programme thanks to a collaboration with the Swedish Film Institute, with speakers coming to Hamburg from Sweden with case studies, trend analyses and contributions to the debate. They will include media analyst Johanna Koljonen presenting the 2023 edition of the Nostradamus Report, and Paolo Vacirca, head of development at the Scandinavian Content Group, speaking about audience-driven development and production.
No comments yet