“Cinema is under attack everywhere”: film execs talk navigating a charged political landscape

The challenges facing filmmakers, festivals and distributors in navigating a polarised political landscape was the big talking point of this year’s industry Summit at the Zurich Film Festival.

Distributors talked about the reality of dealing with right wing social media attacks, while festival directors noted that political controversies at their events were often drowning out discussions about new films premiering. Meanwhile, filmmakers noted the difficulty of securing distribution for contemporary political documentaries. 

“Culture is under attack and cinema is under attack everywhere,” said Nathanaël Karmitz, chairman of France’s production, sales and exhibition outfit mk2, which had six films in Cannes competition this year including Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident.

Karmitz said that movies were getting less and less coverage in the traditional press, “but now we have far-right Twitter (X) accounts that attack systematically everything about movies and French movies. Now in terms of audience, it’s the major voice we hear on Twitter about cinema.” 

Karmitz said his company had recently taken the decision to fight back and respond. “Audiences are fragmented, so you have to take a position. You have to position your company without fearing the consequence, because otherwise you’re nowhere, and you’re Disney or ABC, cancelling, coming back and having no structure and intellectual backbone,” he said in reference to Disney’s recent decision to pull then reinstate Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Karmitz also referred to a recent attempt by right-wing politicians in France to dismantle funding organisation the CNC and to privatise public broadcasters. “This is a very fragile ecosystem. It’s under attack everywhere because these are the first steps to illiberal systems. But I’m an optimist. I believe in people, in companies, in artists to get themselves up and fight back.”

Documentary dilemma

Meanwhile, Kathleen Fournier, producer of Eugene Jarecki’s documentary The Six Billion Dollar Man, about Julian Assange, talked about the challenge of funding and securing buyers for political documentaries.

“As documentaries move to streaming platforms, many of the political and more nuanced, difficult or subjective documentaries did not make that leap. The sort of documentaries you now find on streaming platforms tend to be historical, true crime, or very personal stories.”

Fournier said that despite her documentary winning a Special Jury Prize at Cannes this year, it has yet to find a US buyer. “We’ve been dancing with lots of partners, talking. People love the film, but it’s a difficult film.”

The panel noted that films like the Venice Grand Jury Prize winner The Voice Of Hind Rajab, about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli Defence Forces, had also yet to find US buyers. Oscar winner No Other Land also struggled to find a major US distributor.

Fournier did express some optimism though. “Theatrical distribution is changing. There are some really agile, wonderful, smaller, boutique theatrical distribution companies who are just running with this. The conglomerates can buy up the media landscape all they want, but humans crave stories – and there will always be those people that look to create alternative streaming platforms or boutique distribution.”

Festival controversies

Festival directors also outlined some of the political headwinds that they are now having to navigate. Zurich Film Festival director Christian Jungen recalled last year deciding not to show the controversial documentary Russians At War by Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova for safety considerations. “The day it should have been shown here in Zurich I had death threats. I was walking around with personal security. We had to pull it off the screens. CNN was here. All hell broke loose because of a documentary film.” 

Toronto, meanwhile, drew protests earlier this month for including Barry Avrich’s Israeli documentary The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, about a retired Israel general’s attempt to save his family on October 7. The film was at one point pulled from the festival before being reinstated, and went on to win Toronto’s People’s Choice Award for best documentary,

Cameron Bailey, CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival, said: “We exist in a much more polarised world politically than it was years or decades ago, and we’re a part of that. Current political conflicts will inevitably affect what happens at film festivals because we are participating in the overall climate.”

In particular, documentaries about current conflicts like Ukraine or Gaza are “always going to be more of a hot button,” said Bailey. “They will generate more controversy and in some cases, threats.”

But Bailey said it was important for festivals “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.”

Tricia Tuttle, director of the Berlin Film Festival, said it was important for festivals to prepare for controversy for films on hot button topics. “It hasn’t happened to me yet that I’ve seen a film that I’ve really loved and 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, we prepare for the kinds of talking points that it might bring up.”

Tuttle added: “We believe that the Berlinale has always been a place that embraces sometimes difficult conversations, and I hope we never stop.”

But she said it was important for politics not to drown out a festival’s main role – to showcase new films and to get them talked about.

“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,” said Tuttle.

“It’s a very delicate thing to balance. I don’t think of the Berlinale as a political film festival, but we are a city festival in a city that is very politically engaged. It’s very diverse. 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 - 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.”

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