07/06/2005

What role, if any, do film festivals have in discovering new talent? This question sparked off quite a debate in Rome yesterday during discussions involving the directors of the parallel sections at Europe's major film festivals, namely Cannes, Venice and Berlin. The event at the French Academy in the Italian capital was organised to coincide with the start of the 10th edition of "Le Vie del Cinema da Cannes a Roma", an Italian review (in Rome, Milan and Bologna) featuring a selection of works shown in the various sections at the 58th Cannes Film Festival.

This is the 3rd successive year Rome has hosted a debate on issues affecting quality films in Europe, and it is seen as a chance to reflect on the general state of the sector. According to the artistic director of the Cannes review in Rome, Georgette Ranucci, quality films have recently been losing ground in Italy, with a drop in audience interest and dwindling returns at the box office. The situation does not seem to be as serious in France, and Olivier Pere, who oversees the independent Quinzaine section (Directors' Fortnight) at Cannes, says "the festival selector can have an important role in presenting the film to a wider audience, but it's the filmmakers who actually take the most risks".
The director at Pesaro, Giovanni Spagnoletti, believes festivals themselves are part of the circulation of a film. He gave the example of the Italian work Vento di Terra by Vincenzo Marra, "which has been shown at festivals around the world. Even though it hasn't taken money at the box office, this worldwide exposure is a kind of communication in itself".

It was generally agreed it is not necessarily the role of the parallel sections to discover new talent, though a topical example of 'talent spotting' was raised involving this year's Cannes Palme d'Or winners, the Dardenne brothers. They presented their third feature film, La Promesse, in the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes in 1996 and have since gone on to win not just one but two Palme d'Ors, putting Belgium cinema firmly on the map.

The speakers agreed that those who select films for festivals play their part in discovering talent, but as Jean-Christophe Berjon from Critics' Week at Cannes emphasised, it is "the producer who should be searching out and discovering new talent, and the distributors who have to make the most of that talent". His words were echoed by the curator of the Berlin Forum, Christoph Terechte, who nevertheless believed festivals "can generally help to give films a wider chance" in the marketplace.

Giorgio Gosetti, the director Venice Days, the authors' section on the Lido, noted that "films get discovered by themselves", and the role of the parallel sections at film festivals is "to provide provocation and stimulate debate amongst filmmakers, audiences and the media". The new curator of Critics' Week at Venice, Francesco Di Pace, pointed to many more autonomous independent films being made, where the producer has a less prominent role and where selection at a film festival can be "fundamental for the immediate future of a film, even helping to complete the production as well as helping to find a distribution".

In addition, under the new Reference System used for awarding public funding for films in Italy, a film is given additional positive weighting if it is selected for a festival. Giorgio Gosetti pointed out that this type of system, also in operation in Germany and Switzerland, obviously "means selectors have a greater responsibility".