25/09/2025 - The Creative Investors’ Conference trained the spotlight on new investment sources that can help the industry develop, and looked at the current European powerhouses

A moment from the Creative Investors’ Conference (© Pablo Cifuentes/SSIFF)

For the fourth year, the San Sebastián International Film Festival has hosted its Creative Investors’ Conference within the scope of Spanish Screenings: Financing & Tech, organised by Spanish Screenings. Once again a meeting hub for professionals from Spain, Europe and beyond, this edition focused fairly strongly on the new models that are starting to shape the industry amid these hectic times, which are directly conditioned by ever-evolving new technologies and the need to establish patterns in production, distribution and exhibition that will be able to keep pace with audiences.

Therefore, in an ever-more globalised industry, the need for European companies to become stronger and to increase their scale has become more pressing. A panel exploring new funding models launching around the globe saw the participation of the Together Fund (see the news), a capital growth fund that aims to help independent companies scale their operations and strengthen their market position while preserving their editorial autonomy. Managing partner Alexandra Lebret stated, “European producers will use this kind of fund if they want to take the next step with their companies and grow bigger, since they don’t have an alternative – the bank is not doing this.” The fund is “not financing companies from the start; we want proof that the company works and that it has a growth strategy thought through. We expect the companies to acknowledge the verticality of the industry.”

As also stated by Lebret, what her fund can help a company with is “the step before being bought by one of the powerhouses”. As a matter of fact, a new landscape of European powerhouses has been developing recently, including companies such as Fremantle, Mediawan, Studio TF1 and Vuelta Group. All four participated in a panel explaining their role in the current industry. “Powerhouses help producers and companies get their projects off the ground. Our role is to bring people together to work under our production company, the smaller third production companies we are working with included,” explained Studio TF1 CDO Rodolph Buet. “Europe is not a fully homogeneous market, so as a company working in various countries, you need to be as flexible as possible. Our projects are organically born in their regions, and then we develop them according to their needs,” said Vuelta Group CCO David Atlan-Jackson; “in the coming years, there will be more consolidation from the powerhouses in the landscape,” he added.

A similar model to the Together Fund is that of Spain’s Suma Capital, an independent responsible investment manager, also described as an “expansion fund” that invests in companies and not in projects. Founding partner David Arroyo described how one of their most successful partnerships is with major Spanish distribution company A Contracorriente Films, which for him has a “very interesting business model, since it acquires IP for the long run and exploits it sequentially in different windows. [...] We have also invested in other fields, such as FAST channels, which is a massive opportunity,” he continued.

A recurring topic throughout the conferences was the incipient role of commercial brands as financers in the film industry. According to Mediawan CEO Elisabeth d’Arvieu, “More and more financing will be coming from brands” that are stepping into movie production “not only for product placement or for advertising content, but also for associations in conventional films”, according to Library Pictures International CEO David Taghioff, who outlined its investment in Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], one of the works by the film-production leg of fashion brand Saint Laurent, which has also been present at San Sebastián via Claire Denis’s The Fence [+see also:
film review
interview: Claire Denis
film profile]. This case may be the most high-profile one, but a lot of brands are working with companies to create content that is commercially viable for them, as stated by Lars Sylvest, whose Thank You Studios fuses venture capital, strategic branding and storytelling.

In any case, more traditional funds, which are backing projects and not companies, are also being founded - even in regions of the world that are traditionally less of a financing source. “Africa is a very interesting place right now,” stated Logical Pictures president Frédéric Fiore. Next Narrative Africa, a multimedia entertainment company aiming to support content from Africa and from the African diaspora, has launched a $40 million fund to support “a sector that was not explored enough on the continent, and which is also an opportunity to change the narrative about Africa”, according to CEO and founder Akunna Cook.