Matt Carey

Welcome to Industry Insights, the EFM podcast, presented by the European Film Market of the Berlinale. My name is Matt Carey. I'm the senior documentary editor at Deadline.com. This podcast shines a light on highly topical trend-setting industry issues, and it's designed as a compass for the film year ahead, helping professionals navigate the fast-changing creative landscape. Industry Insights is a year-round podcast co-funded by Creative Europe Media. Today's episode focuses on the state of documentary production and distribution. We've got two wonderful guests joining us today to share their perspectives on matters of urgency of the documentary community. Firstly, Ove Rishøj Jensen, who has been working in the international documentary sector for over 20 years. He was recently appointed as documentary advisor for the Nordisk Film and TV Fund. Later on, the show we're going to be joined by Geralyn White Dreyfous, who is the co-founder of Impact Partners, which funds independent documentary storytelling. She's also the founder and board chair of Utah Film Center, and chief film officer and co-founder of Jolta Film, a streaming platform for independent film. So Ove Rishøj Jensen, let's begin our conversation with you. Welcome to Industry Insights.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Thank you very much, Matt, and thank you for having me. Great to be here.

Matt Carey

As you mentioned, you've been in the field for over 20 years, and part of that time you've certainly been very much involved in pitching and in your new role at Nordisk Film Fund, you're going to continue your curation of nonfiction pitches and works in progress at various co-production platforms worldwide. You've also been doing, participating in pitching forums at FIFA Forum and others. Before we get into the state of pitching, which is an interesting topic, I'd love to get some overall insights from you and what you see as the major challenges facing documentary production and distribution, broadly speaking, in Europe.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, I think one of the main challenges that we see at the moment is that what the market is looking for is becoming more and more kind of divided into two different paths, so to say. So a lot of broadcasters are now increasingly looking for documentation or things that are maybe not necessarily things that will work for festival distribution or cinema distribution. So I think that's one of the big challenges we see at the moment that what used to be things that you could have both on broadcast and festivals and in cinema is now becoming much more divided into two different paths.

Matt Carey

Very interesting. You and I met up at Idfa in Amsterdam. And that was very interesting there to look at their pitching forum, which is perhaps the most important in the world, certainly a very important one. They changed their process. And I'm going to quote from their website, whereas presentations no longer included live panel feedback. Instead, all feedback is delivered through prearranged one-on-one meetings. I don't want you to put you in the position of speaking for IDFA, but as you observing the pitching form. How do you think that worked? And if you want to care to speculate as to why they made that change.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

I don't know why they made that change. I guess they are, as many of us who work with pitching and with curating these things, trying always to find the perfect form for it and trying to adapt to the industry changes as they happen. So I guess that what they were trying to do was to put more effort into the individual meetings and the individual conversations with people by quicker getting the pitching kind of done in two days, so to say. I can imagine that has been the thought behind it.

Matt Carey

Yeah, you've attended pitching forums in Thessaloniki, for instance. You know, in the U.S. is an important one at the Camden International Film Festival, which is sort of a public event, kind of interesting, where hopefuls pitch in front of a live audience. And there is a panel on stage giving feedback. That is the thing that changed at IDFA. And is it your sense now that part of what's happening is that these decisions on what projects to back are really being made by committee or at higher executive levels, if you will, and the people on the ground attending pitching forums who represent distributors are not empowered to make decisions in the moment.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

That's definitely a change that has happened in the industry, that if you go back 10, 15 years, the people who would be giving feedback or being in a feedback panel, they could make decisions.

And that's not the case anymore.

Pitching is now much more pitching to people at broadcasters who then will have to go back and pitch internally to their commissions and to their bosses. So that whole decision process has indeed changed.

Matt Carey

What do you think potentially could be lost there? I mean, I suppose on the plus side, maybe some on the ground, some representatives of distributors would become a little over-enthusiastic, perhaps, and respond to someone's personality and maybe less, I'm speculating, less so to the substance of a pitch. However, you know, is there a risk that we're going to get some homogenization, here and that some of the undiscovered emerging talent will potentially be closed out because they're not names and the moment that's on the ground when they're pitching is not going to be reproduced when that person has to then go back to their home base and pitch it to someone else above them.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, I think we are losing that aspect of a forum if we don't have feedback that it's not only about the feedback to the project that's being pitched, so to say. It's also to understand what kind of questions do certain funders and finances and distributors ask, because that, of course, reflects what are they looking for, what kind of films can they work with. So by not having the public, the public Q&A, so to say, after the pitch, of course, we're losing that aspect of understanding who are the funders, because that is now all happening through individual meetings.

Matt Carey

Why do you think these decisions have migrated upwards, so to speak? In other words, that they're more on the hands of senior executive, shall we say, as opposed to those on the ground?

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, I think it's partly because broadcasters are taking more kind of control and they are commissioning it more from a central point of view than they used to do 10 or 15 years ago, that now it's much more relying on certain strategies and certain approaches in their commission than it's relying on the individual commissioners who are looking for programs. So it's definitely a process that has been much more centralized. That's how it is.

Matt Carey

Well, I suppose that is something we often see and at a political level in many ways, there's always that pressure to centralize and so that's interesting that that's happening in the documentary space. As we mentioned, you were recently appointed documentary advisor to Nordisk Film and TV Fund. Congratulations. Thank you very much. On that, you started in November, so only a few weeks or so in that position. Yes. And the fund supports Nordic audiovisual productions, including future films, creative documentaries, and drama series. Obviously, you will be focusing on the documentary space. What are your objectives in that role?

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, we are a kind of pan-Nordic fund that tries to be helping and giving top funding, top financing to documentary productions in my case, but of course to artificial productions in general in the Nordic countries. So we are really looking for projects where we can lift kind of the top level productions to an even higher standard by giving up funding to these projects. So that's really what we are aiming to do.

Matt Carey

You're Danish, you're based in Copenhagen. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll be doing quite a bit of traveling in your new role. But it's been a wonder of the documentary world, I think, to see the extraordinary success of documentaries that are coming out of the Nordic countries. And this is by no means an accident has to do with many things, including the film schools, for instance, in Denmark and elsewhere. And we've seen that success reflected, for instance, in Ibelin, a wonderful documentary by Benjamin Ray, Norwegian filmmaker. Many films from Denmark, Flee, which are in three Academy Award nominations, a house made of Splitters, marvelous film by Simon Lerring Wilmot, which was supported by Nordisk Film Fund. Yes, indeed. You know, what can the rest of the world learn from what you're doing in the Nordic countries because you're making some of the finest documentaries in the world.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, I think there are two things that makes the region work in the way that it does. First of all, it's a long tradition. It's not something that comes overnight. And it's a long tradition of making sure that each part of the chain works, so to see. It means everything from a good film school to stable film institutes and film funds that can continue to support filmmakers and support independent filmmakers. And of course, also a political world to keep these institutions and these structures functioning. And then there is the other part, which is the collaboration across borders, because each of the Nordic countries are fairly small countries. But by collaborating and by having a creative exchange among the countries, we can lift films to both creative and financial levels that would not be possible in each country. So it means that both in terms of funding, but also in terms of creative collaboration, there's a lot of exchange among the five Nordic countries where people really collaborate and work together to create the films that you see coming from our region.

Matt Carey

And I wanted to ask a little bit more about this public. support for the activities of filmmaking in general and certainly documentary filmmaking. Of course, we're talking about taxpayer money going to support these projects. That's an enormous distinction compared to the United States, where there is very little public money that goes into documentary and less and less under the Trump administration. But what's your sense about the durability of that public support? I mean, it seems to me, and just editorializing here, that it would be a mistake to think, oh, it's always going to be that way. We don't know what sort of governments take over. And in that context, I would simply mention not in Europe, but other parts of the country, I mentioned the Trump administration. It has gone after funding for PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, which traditionally has been the most important platform for documentary film. Trying to defund that. But if you look, for instance, at Argentina, which has a right-wing government, they also have suspended funding as of March of last year for its film cinema and audiovisual arts in general. And this is also affecting film festivals like Marr del Plata. I don't want to get into that per se, but just teeing that up as a question of to what extent are you confident that there will be continued public support, at least in the Nordic countries, if not in Europe in general, for public financing and documentaries?

Ove Rishøj Jensen

It's not necessarily something that we can take for granted. I mean, it has been in decades now the case in many European countries and especially in the Nordic regions, but I don't think it's something we can take for granted here in the Nordics or in Europe, per se. I think it's something that we always need to stand up for and fight for. And I think it's also something that we need to see in a much broader perspective because it is really about protecting independent voices. It's really about also seeing independent media, both documentary but fiction, but also independent media as such, as a central part of our democratic societies. I think we need independent voices to raise debates, to create mirrors to our societies and our human behaviors, to keep asking the important questions about how we evolve societies and how we behave in them. So I think that is really an essential thing. And for me, a very, very central thing in the whole democratic flow in our societies, without the independent voices, without the public-supported media, that critical voice just has less space. So I think it's very, very important that we preserve it and that we also see it as something that has a bigger meaning in our societies.

Matt Carey

Oh, I fully agree, and I think that's really an essential perspective. And of course, we rely on documentary filmmakers around the world, certainly in the U.S. and in Europe, to be those voices, to penetrate and examine social, political, environmental issues in great depth. And it is in the context of a democratic society. Absolutely. So I thank you for articulating that so well. In terms of challenges, naturally funding is always a challenge. And I did want to ask you about something that I saw in my research. This was May 21 statement. that was signed by many signatories, about three dozen of them, including Lascom, which is the French audiovisual group, the Danish Producers Association, and the Documentary Association of Europe. They were commenting on the state of funding from a European Union perspective. One of the things that they said in their statement was, quote, European creative documentary as a genre is under threat due to structural underfinancing. And they continued, quote, It is with great concern that we note the shark decline and support for creative documentaries by the European Commission, following the adoption by the Parliament of the multi-annual financial framework of 2021 to 2027. So this was covering the current period, and the statement did come out in 2021, but I wanted to get your thoughts on that, of that expression of concern and what the state of, financing is within the European context. Yeah.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, in the European context, it differs a lot depending on where you are in Europe. Obviously, we have a strong support system here in the Nordic countries. And if you go to other parts of Europe, maybe it's less stable and also in certain countries, much more under threat and also being influenced by governments who don't necessarily see a critical voice as an important part of the public structures. So that really varies a lot. But I think what is important is that we see this as an essential part of the European society and as the European way of living. That this critical voice is something that we need to keep up and that we need to also keep fighting for. Because otherwise we loose, I think, a very essential part of our democratic discussions also, because very often we see there's things that really lead to public debates or lead to big kind of discussions around things, is often initiated by a documentary film. It can be maybe a more journalistic piece that comes from a broadcast, or it can be a film that is shown in cinemas or at festivals. But these films often really lead discussions about, changes we see in our societies.

Matt Carey

In terms of platforms where people are watching documentaries in Europe, obviously that's been evolving for 10 and 15 years, and you have the broadcasters, but there are streaming platforms, and I think of Via Play in the Nordics and Baltics countries, which has a variety of programming, including some documentaries, and there's Mooby and Artea.tv, I would say, Correct me if I'm wrong, that they're probably dwarfed in size by Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime, which certainly are available in much of Europe. Yeah. And are only getting bigger by the moment? Yeah. But how are those platforms doing? And our documentaries, I guess the larger question is, our documentaries getting to the audiences. Can the audiences find them?

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, if you look at some of the viewing patterns in Europe, I think there is a very clear pattern that, of course, streamers like Netflix and HBO, of course, have a huge audience across all European countries. But there is still also a strong national preference when it comes to watching documentaries and other independent media. And I think, at least in the Nordic countries, I know that still the popular. public service broadcasters still have a big share of the viewing. This is where many people go to to watch both fiction and documentary films. So, for instance, here in Denmark, where I live, there's still a big share of the streaming that is done through DR TV here in Denmark and TV2 in Denmark. So they still have a big share. They really do.

Matt Carey

And you mentioned Netflix and HBO. Well, as we recently learned, they could eventually be part of the same company. Netflix announced its intention to merge, essentially, to buy Warner Brothers, which would include HBO Max. I think that's triggered a sense of alarm in a lot of Hollywood communities. The Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America basically come out against that. proposed merger. And we're seeing a lot of machinations at the top levels of both business and government because it would require regulatory approval. All that to say that we don't know if the merger will go through. The other big suitors, of course, are Paramount slash Skydance, which has, through David Ellison, a close relationship with the Trump administration. But setting that aside of what eventually happens, we're pretty much looking at a considerable consolidation here. In other words, the big entity is getting even bigger. Are there some thoughts that you would care to share about that and its potential impact, specifically on documentary production?

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, I think it's not necessarily for the benefit of independent voices that these giants just become bigger and bigger and more and more gigantic. On the other hand, if we saw what happened, 10 or 15 years ago with the music industry, we almost ended up in a situation where there were only five record labels left in the global perspective. And the reaction to that was an enormous amount of small sub-labels, right? Because the giants and the big labels became so big that you saw immediately the rise of a number of smaller independent labels. And I think there will always be a counter-reaction those kind of things. So when the big, in this case, streamers just get gigantic and so huge that it's difficult to actually see now how big a market share they will get. It will be really a big part. I think there will always be a counterreaction to that. I think there will always be people looking for independent film and independent produced voices. So let's see how this it turns out, of course, immediately my reaction is that it's not necessarily favorable for documentary creation and for independent voices, because now there's going to be less people controlling more, which is, I think, always a challenge. But let's see in the little bit the longer run. I guess that there will be a counterreaction to it.

Matt Carey

Ove Rishøj Jensen, thank you so much for sharing your perspectives on that and stay with us as we expand the conversation with Geralyn White Dreyfous of Impact Partners and Jolt.film. White-Drefus, you are the co-founder of Impact Partners, an incredibly important institution which has really provided critical funding of independent documentary storytelling. For many years, some of the greatest documentaries made are due, in large part, to Impact Partners. You were also the founder and board chair of Utah Film Center and the chief film officer and co-founder of jolt.film, which is, of course, a streaming platform for independent film. You're also a founding member of Game Changer films. I think we could spend a half hour talking about your credits. You've produced over 200 films, so it's a long and distinguished career. Welcome to the show. We appreciate you being with us with your deep roots in production, As I did with Ove, maybe starting off some general macro thoughts about the state of documentary production and distribution, especially from a U.S.-based perspective. You're based in the U.S. and your films go around the world, but would love to get your take on what you see as the state of documentary production and distribution.

Geralyn Dreyfous

Sure. So I've spent my career financing great films. I often get credits for producing them, but they're, you know, usually executive producing. And I think what I think we've developed a talent for is really discovering and nurturing talent. Like we're in the discovery business. A lot of our films have been first-time filmmakers. And then the financial support that Impact Partners has brings to filmmakers is what we, we feel like we are very investing in the, in the artistry of the backbone of the industry. Our premise when we started was that the faster you could get capital to filmmakers the better because we see filmmakers as creative entrepreneurs and their films are very much startups. Every single time you make a film, you're starting from scratch and capital is very important for people to be able to pivot and make good decisions. So in the financing side of the table, which is in the European, different from Europe, and that we fund a lot of our films through philanthropy and through private equity, not as much from the government. We've seen dramatic changes. Impact Partners is going to be 20 years old and 27. And we started out and there was really only public television in HBO. And then there was a plethora of growth. And then streaming came in, and now we're seeing a massive consolidation of buyers. And an incredible amount of pressure on filmmakers to figure out ways to self-distribute films, which I think is deeply challenging, which is why we started jolt as an experiment. But I would say, for me, I'm very troubled by what we're seeing in the, in the both financing and distribution side of documentary filmmaking in America. I think we have less choices and we're being driven much more by algorithms than taste. And certainly the biggest threat that I see is public interest documentary filmmaking and impact has made it its business to support films that we think are in the public interest and also have a social impact and a huge educational component for democracies to flourish so that citizens can have access to ideas and information to make them make good decisions about who they elect and how they spend their time, talent, and treasure.

Matt Carey

Well, I think you and Ova are very much in sync about that of the critical role, the documentary filmmaking plays in the overall context. of a democratic society and free exchange of ideas. You mentioned algorithms, and let's pursue that a little bit more. I think people have been aware for quite some time of algorithms, say, in YouTube, or Netflix, of pushing content to you, you, the user of those platforms. Can you speak a little bit more about how algorithms are driving decision-making to your knowledge? within the documentary space, be it at Netflix, be it at any entity that is using that as a guidepost?

Geralyn Dreyfous

Well, my first real introduction to algorithms was actually making the film The Great Hack when I don't think anybody understood that we were being targeted based on our social media feeds, and I don't think anybody understood the amount of data that these companies actually have about us and how important the like button was and the sharing and what we could extrapolate through analytics. So I don't pretend to have any insight into how the algorithm of Netflix has been built. But I do know that, you know, every single one of us, our subscribers, has a different algorithm feed. And my page one is different than your page one. And most 95% of the people that are Netflix subscribers don't go off of page one. So to that degree, our audience, or by definition, we as consumers have become pretty passive, which I think is we have to put some of that responsibility back on us, that we're being spoon-fed and we're going to these platforms that we subscribe to looking for something if it's been told to us by word of mouth and otherwise we're consuming content that's being fed to us. So I think everybody needs to get curious about that and try to make. mix up their algorithm or be looking for content or searching for things with our own tags and coding. Because I certainly don't feel like I'm getting served up what my appetite wants to ingest. And the only other thing I'll say is that, you know, what I've come to understand from leadership at Netflix is that a lot of independent cinema in general, not just documentaries, is not garnering an audience share that is competitive with the business model anymore. So in other words, the streaming platforms have outgrown what we would call more, what they might call micro cinema. I've never heard them use that word, but that we're small, we're small compared to other content, and therefore, even though there's an infinite amount of real estate, it's not as strategic, I guess, to be buying our content as it is other content. So we're competing with eyeballs. And in that respect, we're competing with ratings, what we used to call ratings in television. And I think that we have some deep soul searching to do as a community about our own need to do audience development. know, to grow our audience. I think that they're not wrong about the numbers. We're certainly seeing that on jolt, that it's very hard to get people to want to pay for documentary films. We're used to getting things for free now. There's like a collapsing of so many things that's happened in the last, I would say, five to seven years. That's so fast and so dramatic that it's hard to put your finger on which lever to pull if you had to like pull one to help autocorrect something. But I do feel that in the days of television broadcast, our forefathers, you know, they foresaw the need to carve out public interest programming as a part of the exchange of access to public airwaves. And in the digital world, we don't have anything commensurate with public airwaves. Everything is corporately owned. And so there's, you know, we're faced with a situation to either try to regulate that so that there'd be some amount of programming that happened in public television. And oftentimes that public programming was on at two in the morning. And what's the upside of that is that in a digital world, you can access anything 24-7, but you still have to market that that programming exists in order for people to know that it's there. So when you look at films that don't get distribution and they get on to TVod or, you know, anything from Prime to iTunes, they pretty much sit there unless there's marketing and exposure for people to know to find it. So they're essentially shelved and they're not numeric, they're not renumerating filmmakers in any substantial way so that they can recoup money the way that we did with DVD sales or other things. So all of our ancillary ways of financing. or recouping money for the artists have gone away with streaming. And so we're left with the algorithm or we're left with coming up with our own marketing budget to market that our films exist on whatever platform it exists. And that's putting more of the onus of responsibility, I think, on the artist and the producer and director and people are pretty threat-bear. So I'm feeling a level of exhaustion. On behalf of the artist who is, you know, who I care a lot about, you know, that work hard to bring us important content.

Matt Carey

Yeah, that's obviously enormous time demands and potentially outlay of money to try to break through and get attention if you had to take that upon yourself as a filmmaker. You mentioned The Great Hack, a marvelous film directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, really eye-opening. Ove, I would love to get your thoughts on the use of algorithms in the context of what you see, in Europe, I suspect, by a play and others, are used essentially the same kind of technology. But what are your concerns, if you have any, about algorithmic thinking, so to speak?

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Well, extending a little bit on what Geralyn just said, I think the challenge is increasingly that people don't come to platforms to find anything anymore. People have made up their mind, more or less, before they come to the platform. It means that the marketing of and how we actually get attention for our films have completely changed when it comes to online and when it comes to VOD. Because less and less people actually make up their mind after coming to a platform. They make up their mind before they come to a platform. It means that the need for attention begins much earlier than it has done before. So I think that's really a change in the landscape that I see.

Geralyn Dreyfous

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And luckily there's technology to target, you know, the same way that you get micro-targeted with any algorithm, whether it's consumer advertising or political advertising, you can do that with films as well because the technology exists to do that.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Yeah, I just think that the change for filmmakers is that before, if you had a theatrical release as your first release, you would have a distributor helping you with that attention. Now, when you get on a platform, you often don't have someone to help you with creating that attention. So, again, to get any visibility for your film, it falls back on the filmmakers. So it just brings more and more work back to the producers.

Matt Carey

And, Geralyn, I did want to ask you about developments in the United States. You mentioned PBS, of course, which is, as you pointed out, along with HBO documentary films, is really probably for decades, the foremost platform, distribution platforms for serious creative documentaries. And since President Trump retook office, he is pretty much right from the get-go made defunding a public media a priority, and under pressure from him in his administration, the Republican-led Congress, defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports both NPR and PBS. We're seeing some immediate impacts there of budget cuts at PBS, which I understand to be 20%. Across the board, yeah. Yeah.

Geralyn Dreyfous

For some programs, I mean, ITVS, it's like 80% because it's a, it's a slate on the film. But, of course, across stations, it's 20%. But for congressionally funded programs like ITVS, it's huge.

Matt Carey

And American experience, just like one other example, long running, you know, Emmy Award. winning series from GBAH, the Boston Public Television Station, is at least for the time being, no longer going to produce any new films. And so that is a huge cultural loss right there, loss of jobs. Can you comment on the impact of that? In the so broader context, as you've been speaking about, of shrinking demand for documentaries by so many entities.

Geralyn Dreyfous

Right. Well, I think that just losing opportunities for distribution by definition is going to shrink the access of content that's available to the general public. So, you know, the less outlets that you have that are programming the films. I mean, what PBS has done simultaneous to the cutbacks is they've been growing a steady, secondary, ancillary market on YouTube. So there's a fallback, if you will, but there's also been an eclipsing of the audience. The audience is like 3x, you know, it's almost 10x sometimes to what is being viewed on the linear platform versus what's being viewed on YouTube. And thank goodness, people like Raney Aronson had the, as executives, had the leadership or foresight to have that be a back. backstop or a secondary. I mean, I think it came out originally with the idea of how do we reach younger audiences, we'll go where they are. But now I feel like it's a saving grace, if you will, because it's together with the linear audience and the YouTube audience. It's not impenetrable, but it's impressive. It's significant. But losing things like American experience are just losing programming that allows us, you know, some niche audiences that have had followings and educational track records. And that's very sad. And I know that those programs are now also under Rainey's leadership at Frontline. So she's being asked to take up the slack, if you will, or under her management, in addition to keeping her eyes on the prize, in this case, Frontline, which is one of the few places where great investigative journalism still flourishes and has an outlet. She also has Nova and American experience in her suite of responsibilities. So there's pressure there, too.

Matt Carey

Yeah, as you say, I think that that's been very impressive and so smart of them at Frontline to provide their programming for free on YouTube. and has generated big audiences and really shown a way forward, as you mentioned. And then front line, interestingly, has also gotten in some unlimited fashion into theatrical distribution with the films of Mstyslav Chernov, for instance, the Oscar winner, including his new film, is Oscar contender 2000 Meters to Andriivka, and also Antidote, which is another Oscar contender about the Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev, who's identified the poisoners behind the attempt to kill Alexej Nawalny, as we saw in the documentary Nawalny. So that's been very impressive in the overall space, as Zov and I were talking about, and everyone was talking about, certainly on this side of the Atlantic, but I think probably worldwide we have this clearly going to be a consolidation of major proportions in the streaming space. With Netflix, possibly buying Warner Brothers Discovery. If it's not Netflix, it's going to be Paramount slash Skydance or Comcast was the other suitor. You know, the IDEA, the International Documentary Association, came out with a statement really condemning that and thinking it would be very bad for documentary filmmakers at the IDEA Awards. Recently, I got to speak with your colleague and impact partners, Jenny Raskin, And she also expressed concern about that potential merger and would love to get your perspective on that of how it's going to impact documentary filmmakers.

Geralyn Dreyfous

Well, I mean, obviously there'll be a consolidation of acquisitions, right? You know, and maybe, I mean, one could be hopeful and think that Netflix might with a brand like HBO resurrect its halo and provide. more documentary programming under that brand. I don't have any access or insight into whether that is something that they're looking at or discussing, but it will be one less place, one less buyer. So from a competitive point of view, that's not great. And now with the new news that it could be Ellison and, you know, it's hard to know what to wish for, right? I mean, the consolidation in general is a bad thing, right, because it's one less market or one less person to acquire content and market content. But I now faced with, you know, Ellison versus Netflix, I mean, I have to think about that. I mean, Netflix, it's more monopolistic because they have access to a much broader market share. Ellison has, you know, would be new to the field, but has some proclivities that, from a kind of political leaning that I find, you know, a little unnerving. But, you know, I don't know which, which way it's going to go. If they're going to go antitrust against Netflix and install somebody that's more inclined to be on the right conservative leaning slant of storytelling, it's not good for documentaries, period. You know, it's like, so it's very nerve-wracking. And to me, I mean, I can only imagine what it's been like for you, Ove, in Europe, where you've had, you know, you've had a fractured landscape because, you know, the European market is language-driven and has been dependent upon government funding a lot to allow your film culture to flourish. But some consolidation, which I've seen Europeans doing to try to kind of compete against an American global company that has so much of a market share and acquire things competitively, I've been impressed by. You know, and we need, my biggest thing is we need more competition. We need more active buyers, you know, supporting the kind of content that social impact and public interest documentaries represent.

Matt Carey

Ove thoughts on now?

Ove Rishøj Jensen

No, there is definitely, I mean, there is a stronger and stronger collaboration among broadcasters and funders in Europe, of course, to try to collaborate and keep up the structures for the independent voices, which we so desperately need in our democratic societies. And just to extend on what you said, Julian, I think that, the challenges, as you say, it's one less door to knock. But it also means that increasingly documentaries and other independent media is being commissioned based on kind of predefined criteria, right? And I think that's really the change I have seen over the last 15 years that as we talked about a little bit earlier, Matt, it used to be that commissioning editors and funders could make independent decisions. that's also becoming less and less the possibility means that also a lot of independent media is now influenced by kind of predefined criteria and not personal and individual taste and judgment of originality, right? It's becoming much more kind of predefined criteria.

Geralyn Dreyfous

Yeah, and I think there's always been for a long time there's been collaboration with, say, public media, let's take Frontline and Storyville or Frontline and Channel 4. I mean, there's been, you know, there's been, or German, you know, television. There's been that collaboration. A lot of that's also been driven by markets and the price of documentaries and how to be able to share or amateurize those costs with aligned distributors or, you know, aligned broadcast partners. So it's been out of necessity too. And I think there's some efficiency in that, but I think there's also a narrowing of the kind of films that would fit the criteria for those broadcasters, which could be seen as gatekeepers to a lot of independent voices. So it's just an overall narrow casting and shrinking across the board that I just, I find that we have to figure out a way to navigate around that. and I don't have great answers at this point, but I just can forecast what I think it's going to lead to, and it's not a flourishment. It's a diminishing, and that makes me very sad.

Matt Carey

Well, very, very big challenges, and I appreciate you both for addressing those in such a frank and substantive manners. I want to thank our wonderful guest, Geralyn Dreyfous, and, of course, Ove Rishøj Jensen. Thank you so much for being with us to share your thoughts on the state of Dr. manufacturing production and distribution in Europe, the U.S., and indeed worldwide. And I hope at some point we get a chance to talk about things like Jolt and other innovations

Geralyn Dreyfous

And we need to share, we need to come together and share those learnings as executives that care about the future of our field. So maybe another time we can talk about what we're learning from Jolt.

Matt Carey

Yes, thank you. I'm sorry we weren't able to get in too much into that, but you're, you're doing through data analysis and a very distinct model there where as I understand that the filmmakers continue to own the copyrights of their films even if they're on the platform. Those are important innovations. So we're going to save that for a future conversation.

Geralyn Dreyfous

I appreciate that. I'd love the opportunity to... And also learn from others. So find some other great examples and bring us all together. It would be in the public space of democracy. Let's get some of those ideas out so people can iterate

Matt Carey

on them as well. Well, I think that that spirit of collaboration is wonderful because I suspect it doesn't happen between, say, Netflix and Amazon. I don't think they get together and share ideas, but. Or their data. Or their data. Pretty, pretty tight with that. Again, thank you both Geralyn Dreyfous and Ove Rishøj Jensen. Thank you so much. And of course, we want to thank you. our dear listeners for joining us and being part of this journey. More industry insights from the non-fiction perspectives will be shared on site at the upcoming Doc Salon, running between February 13th until the 17th, during the European film market in Berlin. Doc Salon will return with expert-led consultations, roundtable, and panel conversations besides daily networking sessions. Doc Salon, its main partner of film films at Fodorant Bayer, as well as our media partner deadline, will be welcoming you, dear listeners, at the Cafe Connect, in the Documentation Center for Displacement, expulsion, and Reconciliation, which is the closest EFM building next to the Gropius. Be sure to subscribe and helps read the word. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and also on the European Film Market website at www.efm-berlinale.com. We look forward to welcoming you to future episodes of Industry Insights.

This season of Industry Insights is co-funded by Creative Europe Media. Thank you for listening and farewell.