How important is this currency of the standing ovations? I mean, I read this news blast, 15 minutes at Venice, another one is saying 13 minutes, the third one is saying 11 minutes. Is this the new currency of prestige for film festivals? How long—
It's ridiculous, but it's also useful, is what I would say. Ridiculous because, of course, that's no measure of a film's quality, how long a standing ovation is. And we've seen standing ovations being kind of encouraged, shall we say, to go on and on and on. And yet, if it calls attention to a film that is of quality, then that still has some use value, but it shouldn't be the measure of quality.
My first question goes to you, Tricia. What is the goal of a film festival? What do we need to achieve these days to be relevant?
The goal of a film festival is to connect, at its most basic level, to connect filmmakers with audiences. I'm going to speak from an audience perspective here because we are a major audience festival. But I think even if you are not an audience festival, Cannes would say that it's about ultimately making sure that that filmmaker can find its audience, launching films into the market, making sure that we keep a profile and a spotlight on a wide range of cinema that sometimes the market doesn't support in the same sort of way. I think those are the principal things that almost every film festival really holds close to their heart. To answer the second part of the question, how do we stay relevant? I think we continue to center audiences. I feel like that is absolutely critical, and really think about how we bring the next generation of film fans into cinema. I think we're going to talk a lot more about how much the cinema landscape is changing, but there's a real opportunity, I think, to bring new young audiences into cinema.
Cameron, do you agree? This sounds very idealistic. Do we still achieve this noble goal?
We have to be idealists. I think I agree completely with Tricia. It's really about discovery. In my view, we know that, let's say if you take the Oscars, 14 of the last 15 Best Picture Oscar winners launched at film festivals. Festivals are still where audiences and the media and even the marketplace discover great new films, great new talent. Most of the filmmakers that audiences are most excited about around the world as auteurs are festival filmmakers whose careers were launched and nurtured by festivals. So I think there is still a real need for festivals, and there will be relevance so long as we stay attuned to what audiences are most interested in. We found in Toronto, I'm sure others would find the same thing, younger audiences are as interested in film as ever. There's always been a kind of pessimism about our young people not watching films anymore. They are absolutely watching a lot of films, and they often—I mean, apart from Letterboxd, I think the places they discover the most is at festivals.
Melissa, why do you go to festivals?
There are many reasons why we go to festivals. From my perspective, I've used festivals as a tool from the acquisition stage to launching films, to pushing out emerging talent—first-time, second-time filmmakers that we're representing—or to find those actual talent and emerging filmmakers from the different festivals. So there's a plethora of reasons why, on the industry side, the festivals are still very relevant.
Are festivals relevant for the Globes, too? Cameron mentioned that 14 out of 15 Best Picture Oscar winners were launched at festivals. How is it for the Globes?
Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Festivals are incredibly important for the Golden Globes. A lot of our voters attend the festivals. As Cameron said, we discover films there. We have now 400 voters from 95 different countries. They travel the world. They attend not only the major film festivals, but also a lot of the smaller film festivals. So they really discover a lot of film and also television, which you can also obviously have at the festivals. So they're incredibly important. And I think what I love about festivals personally is really discovering smaller films that you don't usually get to see. I mean, yes, of course, the big films that then go on to win awards at the award shows, but I think the festivals are such a great platform to really discover a lot of diverse talent and smaller films that you don't get to see anywhere else.
I've attended film festivals for more than 30 years, first as a critic, and now for six years I'm running a festival. I hear you, but my experience in the last years is slightly different. Yeah, it's still about movies, but there are a lot of factors coming into play: politics, controversies. Cameron, you just finished your festival, and you had The Road Between Us, a film that apparently you revoked the invitation and then there was a controversy. How do you make sure these controversies don't overshadow the whole rest? And do you feel that the press is still really interested in the movies, the new talents, or is it more about scandals and boycotts and political opinions?
It's a great question, and I think we're in the middle of a bit of a sea change. Certainly there's much more media coverage of the business of film, the business of the screen industry generally than there used to be. It used to be just inside baseball, and only people who were in the industry followed the media about the industry. Now everybody does. And so that is affecting I think what happens at film festivals. Sometimes internal workings end up in headlines in trade media. But I think it's also that we exist in the world that is a much more polarized world politically than it was maybe years or decades ago, and we're a part of that. So current political conflicts will inevitably affect what happens at film festivals because we are participating in the overall climate.
How do you deal with it? Did you restructure your team? Have you more communication experts? Let me share an experience I made. We had the film Russians at War a year ago premiere at Venice. Positive review, six people at the press conference. Then the film goes to TIFF. Suddenly, it's a pro-Russian film. Headlines all over the place. And the day it should have been showed here in Zurich, I had death threats. I was walking around with personal security. We had to pull off the screenings. CNN was here. Hell broke loose because of a documentary film. How do you deal with such situations? How do you prepare for such moments?
I'll just say I think we've all been through this at the Berlinale. I know you have been as well, Tricia. But in our case, I think there's maybe something specific about documentaries that are about current conflicts—Ukraine, Gaza. That's going to always be more of a hot button and will generate more controversy and in some cases threats, as we also received in Toronto. So I think we have to look at those a little bit differently than just a general landscape of film where I don't think that this is as much of an issue. But when it comes to documentaries, as festivals we have to protect that space for free expression, for artists to actually capture what's going on right now in the world and for audiences to watch it with open minds. That's what we're here for.
But you need a lot of courage, and it costs a lot of money if you have these media waves coming over you and security issues. Does it impact the choice of films? When you leave the theater, you've seen a film that you might want to invite to Berlin, do you think about what it could provoke in terms of conversations?
It hasn't happened to me yet that I've seen a film that I've really loved or my team has really loved and we've decided not to play it because it will bring too much chaos. If we see something we love which we know is going to be a talking point, I think what we do is prepare for what kinds of talking points that might bring up. I think the example you gave, it would be almost impossible to predict that that was going to happen to you, particularly after seeing the Venice response and then watching the conversation around the film change. But as Cameron said, it's a polarized world. There's always a risk of something like that happening. Much more predictable are some of the political hot-button films that we're seeing—films from Israel, films from Gaza right now from Palestinian filmmakers, or films that deal with that conflict. We know when we screen them these are going to be conversations that we need to be prepared to have. But I think we believe that the Berlinale has always been a place that embraces sometimes difficult conversations, and I hope we never stop.
But what is your position? Are you the platform for political discussions, or are you an activist in some way as well? Because Berlin was always called the most political of the big fours.
I think that it comes back to the first question, which you quite rightly said is idealistic. I think we have a job right now, in this particular moment, to balance out these conversations so that we're still talking about cinema, because in the last five years the political and news agenda has taken over all of the airtime around film festivals quite often, and films aren't cutting through. So it's a very delicate thing to balance. I don't think of the Berlinale as the political film festival, but we are a city festival in a city that is very politically engaged, it's very diverse historically. I've inherited a festival that has a personality, and I want to be true to that personality while also making sure that controversies don't take over all of the space for us to talk about cinema. Because that's why we're here, is to make sure that discoveries of new film voices cut through, and not just the political talking points at a festival, which should and will rightly be there, but we have to find space for cinema as well.
Helen, how did the political tide hit the Globes? You were in a controversy, too, considered not diverse enough, but you've done your homework and made the change in your organization. Please talk about your experience in relaunching the Globes.
Yeah, the Globes had a bit of a rough patch for some time, but I think we worked through it and we were happy to come out of it better than ever before. But it was certainly a few years ago the show was almost cancelled, and we had to really think about how we wanted to structure the Globes and how it should be run differently. I don't think I would be here if we had not changed ownership of the Golden Globes. So a big thanks to Jay Penske and Todd Boehly, who brought the Globes back to a great award show. It took a lot of work and—
Are you confident for the next show that it will be about the films and not so much about the institution itself?
Oh yeah, I think last year already, or this year I should say, was not about the institution, and it was really about the award show. Nikki Glaser was an amazing host. We had a great show. I think all the award shows, in fact, have had a really great boost since COVID. We've not just seen it with the Globes, but also the Emmys and the Oscars. They've all done better than before COVID. So I'm very happy that people want to see award shows again and engage with them. And I think especially when we're talking about politics and what's going on in the world, I think award shows are a great way to still escape a little and to really enjoy and also have fun. At the Globes, we call it the party of the year, and it's because it's fun. We honor the finest achievements in film and television, but at the same time, we also have fun.
Melissa, for how long have you been attending film festivals, and how do you see the change?
I've been coming to film festivals for over 20 years. In the beginning, it was more on the acquisition side. So it was, again, discovering new talent and finding voices. And it's shifted over the years. Obviously, it's become a bigger industry tool. It's a resource for sales agents, for financiers, for filmmakers to get their films out there to be highlighted, to be shown, to get emerging voices a highlight that they would normally not get. In terms of the bigger festivals, it's a launchpad for some of the bigger titles for the year. But also I feel like regional festivals are very important as well. It democratizes the access to the films that they normally would never get to see. For example, when we were working on Roma, it was very important that we showcased that film pretty much at every festival across the globe. We were going into regions that normally would not even have cinema or the infrastructure to see a film. We were using a regional festival called Ecocinema, which would basically set up a generator and a projection system and take it into the regions of Chiapas in the jungles, and it was actually giving voice and showcasing art to people that normally would not ever have access to that. So I think the evolution of the film festival circuit over the years has gotten more important.
How do you prepare when you launch a film? Can you talk about a recent example, I don't know, Nuremberg or another film you've launched this year?
Sony Pictures Classics obviously has the US rights for that, so they were more instrumental in getting it to TIFF. But we sold the film out of Cannes the year before. We use festivals all the time to showcase our filmmakers, especially big ones—Berlin, Cannes, Venice, and Toronto. We use them to basically, again, showcase the films that we're selling. We're also trying to find talent that we want to represent. So we use it for different things in general.
To close the political question, it's funny. I've written books on festivals, and for a long time festivals fought to have politicians at their opening night—the chancellor should come, or the president. These days, you're not sure you want to have these folks attending because, depending on their opinion, what they're going to say into the microphones. Are you eager to have politicians at your signature events?
When they're film lovers, absolutely. We had our Prime Minister, Mark Carney, at the opening of the Toronto Film Festival just a few weeks ago. He happens to be a fan of John Candy. We had a documentary about John Candy opening the film. He talked about his love of John Candy and his love of movies and growing up watching those films. That helped. So it's always good to find a bridge between what we do as presenters of film culture and what the politicians are interested in. And it turns out this year we had a great bridge.
Exactly the same answer. Of course we want the support of the political community, we need the support of the community and welcome people as guests, but on stage it really should be about cinema. It shouldn't be a political speech. But politicians are under pressure as well, too. As long as it stays focused on cinema, very happy.
Thank you. Film festivals and awards like the Globes or the Oscars, they had an important role in canonization of movies. A film would win the Golden Bear or the Palme d'Or and it entered film history, and they got reviews. The critics were very important as tastemakers. I remember first attending film festivals in the '90s in Berlin, you had a packed Berlinale Palast in the morning with 2,500 critics, real critics, reviewers. Now the number of reviewers is declining. What does that mean for a festival? How important are they, and how do you deal with the decline of film criticism?
I think the number of accredited press hasn't changed. The nature and the sort of media landscape has completely changed. So you're right. Those sort of attention-centered broadsheets, international broadsheets, space in those publications that reach a wide audience and not just the industry, not just people who self-select and find this podcaster or this specialist film reviewer—that space where you can actually reach a general audience at a film festival has almost disappeared. That really worries me a lot. But what we haven't learned how to do yet, which I hope we will, is to somehow have the noise elevate back up to a non-specialist audience from the festivals. It does eventually, the echo of a smaller film that might screen in the Berlinale and then go on to these great regional festivals, I hope we do build a buzz, but that lightning strike moment is harder and harder to achieve at any festival.
Yeah, I would just agree. Christian, like you, I was a film critic as well, and I saw that vocation really decline in North America. But I think that's okay so long as film culture survives. And so now it's not just film critics who do only that as a full-time career, but it's podcasters, it's so-called content creators, it's all different kinds of ways of extending the conversation about cinema. And I actually think more, at least in my experience, what I can see, more people are following cinema for their own interests as opposed to simply listening to the wisdom of film critics, let's say. So if you look at Letterboxd, if you look at social media generally, you look at Instagram, there are people who are amateur film critics, but they're very influential. And I think that's actually okay so long as the debate, the discussion is being continued.
What does it mean for the Globes? Your organization used to be the foreign correspondents who were interviewers and critics publishing mainly in the printed press and some for TV stations. Can a TikTok critic become a member in your organization these days?
No, they cannot. First of all, I'm very, very pleased that the media coverage around the Golden Globes has not declined, so that's really good news for us. This year alone, we had over one trillion global media impressions at the Golden Globes, so that was incredible. But of course, the form of journalism has changed. As you mentioned, there are now way more content creators, TikTok. The old-school film critic maybe has declined a little bit. But at the Golden Globes, as you know—you are on our membership board of directors—we take only journalists, accredited journalists, into our organization, who then become a Golden Globe voter.
But shouldn't we open up and let in—I mean, if Cameron says there are new forms of talking about cinema, why not let them in and make them voters? Because someone who has a YouTube channel or a big reach on Instagram might do more good for auteur cinema than a 65-year-old critic working for a declining newspaper.
Well, I would argue that there are still journalists out there who are doing very good work, and they're doing it the old-fashioned way. But I'm not saying that the new media forms are not important; they are, and they are certainly getting the word out. We have to look at how we're going to move forward and really define what media means. I think there are a lot of changes, but I wouldn't discount the old-fashioned journalists.
Melissa, how important are the multiplicators for your business?
Very important, having those critic reviews. Especially right after a festival launch, it's very important to have the industry sort of back a film. We use that again as a tool to sell our films. So the more that we have critics praising the film, it'll give us more leverage in the marketplace.
And I'll just say, I'm sure anyone who runs a festival will say we could always use more reviews of the films that we launch from accredited journalists. We had the film that had the longest standing ovation at our festival. We don't measure them, but I was there and we had to actually stop the standing ovation so that we could start the Q&A. It was a film called Palestine 36 by Annemarie Jacir, which was making its world premiere in front of 1,800 people. And the next morning, I opened up all of the trades and was looking for reviews, and I didn't see them from a lot of publications. So when a major film or film that has significant impact launches, it's really important to have those reviews, even though of course we're always looking for the social media responses as well.
Tricia, working in a German-language country, it's harder to get these standing ovations because Germans and Swiss, too, are a bit not like Italians in a football stadium. Is making waves in the theater a preoccupation of yours?
