EXCLUSIVE: German producers Weydemann Bros. and former Paramount executive Steffen Kottkamp are launching Directors Collection, an AVOD and FAST platform to extend the life of films beyond festivals and initial release.
The team are conducting initial licensing deals for the platform at this week’s European Film Market (EFM, February 12-18).
Directors Collection has been founded to extend the visibility of festival, arthouse and independent films. It will be aimed at a cinephile audience, focusing on auteur titles.
The platform will employ online premieres, playlists, and thematic events to promote its titles.
”After the festival circuit and first exploitation windows, visibility of films fades fast,” said a Directors Collection statement. ”Films may remain available, but without active positioning, they are rarely rediscovered. Revenues stay marginal and performance data is often fragmented. And many of the films that premiered at the major A-List festivals don’t get released in more than a handful of territories at all, thus never reaching a large part of their potential audience.”
Directors Collection aims to offer a solution. “It combines algorithmic reach with editorial curation – and translates long-tail attention into measurable, transparent revenues,” said the statement.
”Editorial framing is the product: directorial voices, themes, seasonal moments, premieres, and re-discovery campaigns. All these measures keep titles present in audience discovery flows — beyond passive catalogue availability. The Directors Collection adresses a cinephile audience that is currently dissatisfied with the growing mainstream uniformity of SVOD offerings and the unavailability of a large portion of independent cinema.”
Weydemann Bros, founded by brothers Jakob and Jonas Weydemann, has produced titles including Nora Fingscheidt’s System Crasher and Bafta-nominated The Outrun. The company’s films have won 10 German Film Awards, a Berlinale Silver Bear, and prizes in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, Venice’s Critics’ Week sidebar, Locarno Film Festival and the European Film Awards.
Kottkamp is a curator, producer and executive who was vice president head of production at Paramount Global, based in Berlin; and previously worked at German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF in commissioning and programming.
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