The 2024 International Film Distribution Summit (IFDS, 15-17 October) has wrapped after two full days of keynotes, discussions and networking opportunities. The industry event springs off of European Work in Progress (EWIP) and takes place as a prelude to Film Festival Cologne, happening now. This year’s IFDS included keynotes and presentations from Gabriele D’Andrea, of Italian distributor Lucky Red; Jen Davies, of UK/Irish distributor Conic; David Larkin, of social film community Letterboxd; Oliver Fegan and Alex Stolz, of UK analytics and ticketing company usheru; and Maria Tanjala, of UK fintech company FilmChain, among others.

Tanjala, a longtime producer and co-founder of FilmChain (watch our interview), set up her company in 2018 as a collection account management (CAM) system with the aim of improving trust through data transparency in the industry. She sees it as a “new way of building partnerships between distributors, licensors, sales agents, investors and producers”. This allows FilmChain to respond to new and existing challenges in the film landscape by creating an ecosystem for data-centred collaborations. “We looked at growing libraries and increasing reporting obligations. There’s a further demand for reporting – accurate, fast and instant reporting,” explained Tanjala.

She contextualised the genesis of FilmChain by examining the changing landscape for distributors in both Europe and North America: “We had a very difficult year of strikes that have impacted global licensing and, at the same time, productions that have or have not gone into production. […] There is a clear demand for all of the IP rights holders to still be invested in the recruitment and in the profitability of a production. […] Last but not least, [FilmChain] was also [useful when it came to] the informed consent and fair compensation for digital replicas. We have a very close relationship with understanding the implementation of the European Copyright Directive in Germany because we worked with the German Producers Alliance in order to customise the dashboards for reporting for them.”

The cross-pollination of innovative ecosystems in the distribution space could be seen further through the work of usheru, whose product was presented by CEO and co-founder Oliver Fegan as well as Alex Stolz, the head of Film. usheru is used by distributors including Conic, as elucidated by Conic co-founder and co-CEO Jen Davies earlier in the summit. The analytics company, which allows distributors to more accurately track a film’s performance through an integrated system, also takes a data-driven approach.

D’Andrea, the director of Marketing and Theatrical Distribution for Italian distributor Lucky Red, shared how the company's objective is to bridge tradition and innovation. He emphasised that its aim is to “communicate [its] line-up like a cultural programme” or concert tour dates in order to “give a sense of a continuous flow of films, of great auteurs and of different kinds of nationalities”. Lucky Red was also honoured with the Best International Innovation Distribution Award on the first day of the 2024 IFDS.

This approach was substantiated by a glance at its social-media marketing, which framed the release schedule as a collection, rather than solely individual films. “The most important thing is the quality of the content and the ability to put it together,” said D’Andrea. He also mentioned Lucky Red’s Italian distribution of Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] as an example of its approach. This involved a 10- to 15-minute concert streamed in conjunction with the film by Finnish indie pop band Maustetytöt, who perform in the movie.

Attendees also raised numerous questions about a distributor’s identity formation, referring to the brand success of New York-based distributor A24. D’Andrea stressed that distributors shouldn’t view films as consumer products, but instead as forms of “cultural momentum”. This allows a move away from advertising-driven social media to moulding social media into a space to have conversations while letting the content and brand pull in the audience. A similar phenomenon could be seen in the presentation by Letterboxd head of Business David Larkin, which explored how the platform’s worldwide social community of over 15 million cinephiles allows for novel opportunities for advertising and audience outreach.