Indie Sales Agents Headed to Berlin With New Strategies for Virtual European Film Market
After Sundance, which saw sustained dealmaking activity on select titles, the film industry is gearing up for the virtual European Film Market, incorporating industry and press screenings of Berlin Film Festival’s program. With little sense of when the theatrical business can restart across the world, anxiety in the independent sector is edging up, added to the growing competition from streaming giants.
The EFM, the world’s second-biggest film market, is a place where sales agents traditionally launch movies with strong theatrical appeal, and this year they will need to double up on their marketing efforts to trigger the interest of distributors who are either cash-strapped or overburdened with postponed releases.
“We’re in a ruthless world with new variants,” says Memento’s Emilie Georges. “The more we advance the thicker is the fog. The challenge is to deploy enough efforts to make films exist within the small window of opportunity we have during virtual festivals.”
The virtual format has democratized the festival experience and has forced sales agents to communicate differently.
“We have to work on the marketing earlier than ever before and work closely with film publicists to ensure that select journalists have watched films prior to the world premiere and get filmmakers involved,” Georges says. “The role of publicists has been crucial through the pandemic to get the attention of the media and distributors.”
The Berlinale festival, meanwhile, is a showcase of some of the most daring and sometimes even experimental movies that aren’t particularly streamer-friendly.
“Not every movie will prove as appealing on a computer screen as in a movie theater,” says Films Boutique’s Jean-Christophe Simon, who just acquired the Berlinale competition title “Mr. Bachmann and His Class.”
“For some festival films that are more aesthetically challenging or unconventional, the virtual format might be difficult,” he says.
The executive adds that the fact that the Berlinale will allow journalists to review movies will be essential for the kinds of movies he’s selling.
“Berlin Film Festival’s decision to maintain a festival structure with virtual screenings of film in competition with a jury, and the possibility for journalists to watch movies will contribute to building momentum around world premieres and get distributors excited,” Simon says.
Georges says Cannes last year had disappointed with its decision to not show films in the official selection to the press.
“Festivals are meant to be an echo chamber and a label without the echo chamber is like a wet cannonball,” says the executive.
With Berlin not holding press conferences or arranging junkets, the onus will fall on the sales agents to create anticipation for their films’ online premieres, says Dirk Schürhoff at Beta Cinema, which has Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man” in Berlin’s competition section.
From a buyers’ perspective, the virtual format can have some advantages. “Virtual screenings are not a substitute to watching films on a big screen but there is a purity of experience that’s not falsely elevated by an audience reaction,” says Dylan Leiner at Sony Pictures Classics.