Wendt, and others, expect that some buyers will make the trek to Berlin, as well as festival representatives and the executive teams of films at the fest. “I was sad and even furious when I got the news that Sundance and then the EFM were going virtual,” says Wendt, whose team is trying to score a conference room at a Berlin hotel to set up camp for a hybrid EFM. Susan Wendt, managing director of TrustNordisk, will bring a smaller team to the Berlinale, where the company will have at least one film in the official selection. London-based sales agents like Altitude, Film Constellation and Embankment Films, which don’t have movies in the program, are staying home, but Rocket Science will have a presence on the ground, with boss Thorsten Schumacher - who brought his whole team to Cannes - also planning to attend. Out of the U.K., Mubi’s co-head of acquisitions Kevin Chan says the arthouse streamer, which went on a buying spree in Cannes, has travel and hotels booked but “will wait for the full selection and see how the situation develops over the next few weeks.” Make it stop,” joked one big player, likely speaking for a healthy portion of the industry. That’s not to say, of course, that virtual market fatigue hasn’t set in for the Americans. “For the most part, will do their presentations online, so it would be a little weird to be on Zoom from a hotel room in Berlin.” buyer who preferred to speak anonymously. “It’s going to be a very Euro-centric event,” says one major U.S. FilmNation and Sony Pictures Classics are still believed to be deliberating its on-the-ground presence. presence goes, senior CAA and Neon executives are expected to attend for at least part of the festival, but companies such as IFC Films, Bleecker Street and Participant Media are sitting out an in-person Berlin, preferring to take the virtual route. “We are currently exploring the safe offers we can make for sales agents with films in the Berlinale line-up in accordance with the strict protocol of the festival in its revised concept.”Īs far as a U.S. “We are in a constant dialogue with the sales agents and understand the need a top festival on the scale of the Berlinale generates for the commercial launch of films,” EFM director Dennis Ruh tells Variety. Efforts are also underway to get buyers to Berlin by setting up separate market screenings for films in the official selection, although it’s unclear how feasible this will be.īerlinale Reveals Series, Generation, Co-Production Market Titlesīerlin Film Festival Chiefs Talk 'New Concept' BerlinaleĪsa Butterfield, Natalia Dyer Set to Star in Horror Thriller 'All Fun and Games'Įuropa International, the umbrella group representing European sales companies, has been in negotiations with the EFM to try and arrange some sort of informal, on-the-ground market activity, according to several sources. 10-16, are largely planning to show up, and numerous distributors are expected to attend. Sales companies with a film at the festival, which runs Feb. Berlin’s Martin Gropius Bau building won’t be hopping with the European Film Market’s frenzied deal-making, but the global film industry is still weighing up trips to Germany for an in-person Berlinale.
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