29/07/2024 - The membership organisation, founded in 2023, met at the Polish festival to discuss issues such as crisis management and the climate for public funding

On Saturday 20 July, during the first weekend of the New Horizons Film Festival, members of the International Film Festival Network (IFFN) convened their International Summit to assess the state of the sector. Launched last year by the UK’s Independent Cinema Office (ICO), the IFFN is now composed of 24 film festival members from 17 countries spanning the whole globe, seeking to foster new partnerships between festivals and share best practices and strategic innovation.

A key focus of the discussions were crisis management issues, and incidents of this nature that have been impacting festivals this year. Attendees were able to share their own experiences and models of how they've responded to challenges created by geo- and personal politics, forcing a change in the way they approached risk management, and how this affected their programming decisions in this new context. An environment for shared learning was created, where the group could understand how the others operated on this issue and the related topic of staff wellbeing. Despite some of the festivals belonging to networks amongst domestic cultural bodies and sales agents, the IFFN allows them all to be collectively represented across territories and similar areas of genre focus.  

Also brought up in detail was the current health of public support for festivals, backed by data from the ICO’s Financial Health of Global Film Festivals survey conducted this January, which saw 49 festivals from Australia to Tunisia respond. The results showed that 85% of them need further public funding to remain operational, 69% highlighted rising costs as their main worry, and 37% envisaged they could operate for only a year or less in the current climate. All of these numbers highlight the difficulties festivals continue to face, and that economic intervention, combined with collaboration between organisations, is critical. The summit provided the opportunity for members to confront this economic uncertainty together, share knowledge, and respond to similar challenges in the future.

Catherine Des Forges, Director of the ICO, said that “Any network is only as strong as the collaboration between its members, which is why we believe events such as this are instrumental in strengthening the connection for these festivals across borders.”

The new IFFN Collaboration Fund was announced at the summit, sponsored by the British Council, allowing IFFN members to travel to festivals from 47 Official Development Assistance (ODA) countries including Argentina, Jordan, Malaysia, Nepal, Serbia and South Africa. It aims to help its grantees continue fostering festival exchange, encouraging them to create new partnerships across countries and continents.

Only IFFN members can apply to the IFFN Collaboration Fund, but all festivals are welcome to join the network by applying on the ICO website, which features further information and frequently asked questions. 

Members of the 24-strong network include festivals Cineuropa has partnered with, such as Sarajevo, New Horizons itself, Crossing Europe, Vilnius, Animafest Zagreb and Batumi, alongside others such as Glasgow, Cambridge, Al Este in Peru, and The Other Film Festival in Australia.