At the Summit of Zurich this year, filmmakers and industry leaders have warned that political polarization and attacks on free expression reshape the landscape of cinema, with artists confronted with new forms of pressure from governments, media and online campaigns.
Nathanaël Karmitz, president of the French distributor and MK2 exhibitor, whose slate includes the political drama of Brazil of Kleber Mendonça The secret agent and the winner of the golden palm of Jafar Panahi A simple accidentargued that the link between politics and the cinema is for a long time but has entered a new phase. “Culture is attacked and cinema is attacked everywhere,” he said. “We have less and less press to talk about films, but now we have extreme right twitter accounts that systematically attack everything on French films and films. In terms of audiences, this is the major voice we hear on Twitter. Is this a problem? Yes, that’s it.”
Karmitz said MK2 had recently decided to face such a criticism directly rather than ignoring it. “The public is fragmented, so you must take a stand, and you must position yourself, your business, without fear of the consequences, because otherwise you are nowhere,” he noted, pointing recent attempts by right-wing politicians in France to dismantle the body of the film CNC of France and privatize public television. “It is a very fragile ecosystem. He is attacked everywhere because these are the first steps of the illustrating systems. But I am optimistic. I believe in people, businesses, artists to get up and retaliated. ”
Kathleen Fournier, production manager at Charlotte Street Films and documentary producer Julian Assange d’Eugene Jarecki Man of $ 6 billionhas described a narrowing space for political cinema at the time of streaming. “While documentaries move to streaming platforms, many political and more nuanced and difficult or subjective documentaries have not made this jump,” she said. “What you now find on streaming platforms tends to be historic, [or] It is a real crime, or these are very personal stories. »»
This change has left politically loaded projects which find it difficult to ensure us agreements of us. Both Man of $ 6 billionwhich was created in Cannes in May, and the Gaza-Set of Kaouther Ben Hania Hind Rajab’s voiceWho bowed in Venice, still lacks American distribution. Fournier recognized the challenge but argued that new opportunities are emerging outside the studio system. “There are really agile, wonderful and smaller theatrical distribution companies that really run with it,” she said. “Conglomerates can buy the media landscape whatever they want, but humans want stories, and there will always be these people looking to create alternative streaming platforms, a boutique distribution. We love stories. We will find our way. “
The production of Man of $ 6 billionWho examines the prosecution by the US government of the founder of Wikileaks, Assange, has itself been shaped by political pressure. Initially without fear of including controversial documents, such as the previous comments of former President Donald Trump Attaler Assange, the filmmakers debated self -cenage while the political winds moved to a possible administration of Trump. “In the end, we decided that we must simply tell the story as we wanted, with as many facts and as many nuances and complexity around him that we thought that a public could manage,” said Fournier.
The risks extend beyond financing and distribution. Fournier said that his team had moved production to Berlin to avoid legal exposure in the United Kingdom and the United States: “We did not feel comfortable to modify in the United Kingdom or the United States, because there are laws and means to grasp images, and that journalists are not protected in the way they are in Germany,” she said. “We have moved the whole production team and edit in Berlin, and it was really inspiring and very interesting, until the Gaza War occurred and that we started to see that even Germany, with all its civic spirit, is fallible to ideology and erosion.”
This fragility, suggested Fournier, underlines broader uncertainty against political cinema today: if such projects can still find protection, distribution and an audience in an increasingly polarized world. While some see new opportunities in alternative platforms and store distributors, others indicate that the public is like an ultimate safeguard.
The CEO of the international artist Group, David Unger, underlined the growing openness of the public to the world narration, citing the worldwide success of the Korean series on Netflix. “It shows you that the public will find good stories, and will appreciate interesting characters and embrace the artists who tell these stories, regardless of where they come from,” he said.
The researcher and consultant of film data Stephen Suit urged the industry to remain vigilant. “The 1970s had a much more diverse and interesting narration than the 1980s, and in the 1990s, things became more stupid and simpler,” he said. “The film industry is fundamentally, as a business and as a ecosystem, opposed to risk and frightened and cowardly. [It] needs agitators, because if we do not actively do things, the industry acts in a horrible way. »»
