As is the case every year, the highlight of Cannes NEXT, the innovation-orientated section of the Marché du Film, was its Summit, which once again focused on showcasing and presenting ideas that usually go beyond current technologies and aim to push creativity even further through tech. With a lengthy duration of roughly four hours (you can watch it in its entirety by clicking on the link at the end of this article if you missed it), the Cannes NEXT Summit was moderated by AC Coppens, marketing strategist and curator at The Creatives' Catalysts; Uri Levanon, CEO of Haste Media; and Sten-Kristian Saluveer, head of Cannes NEXT.

Here is a quick overview of all of the speakers, and you can watch all of their keynote speeches and discussions via the link below. The first guest, Miikka Rosendahl, CEO and founder of Finnish VR studio ZOAN, presented his experience of hosting an online event for one million people during the pandemic in a virtual Helsinki, and how this technology could also be applied to future film festivals. Afterwards, Christian Faber, a creative art director known for his previous collaboration with LEGO, focused on the evolution of storytelling and how, by using gaming engines, it could be possible to build global content franchises.

A regular on tech panels, Tobias Queisser, the co-founder and CEO of Cinelytic, a machine learning-driven platform that provides data on and predictive analytics of a film’s value chain before it has even been made, presented how data and AI can work in the movie business. Wayne Godfrey, CEO and founder of the entertainment receivables platform Purely Capital, presented the innovations in the digital distribution and exhibition infrastructure. The key topic of the past few months – how VoD can be adapted or made to work for digital festivals – was explored by David White, CEO of the New Zealand-based company Shift72, which has collaborated with many festivals by handling the streaming of their films. MOLTEN, a startup founded at MIT, offers cloud-based distribution infrastructure and was presented by its CEO, Arjun Mendhi.

At the beginning of the second hour, a panel including Tine Fischer, director of CPH:DOX; Katrine Kilgaard, head of industry at CPH:DOX; Jarod Neece, senior film programmer at SXSW; and Uri Levanon discussed their experience of bringing the festivals’ new digital or hybrid format to fruition during the pandemic and beyond. The following keynote was entirely dedicated to Epic Games, and Marc Petit, general manager at Unreal Engine, explained how it is possible to bring the magic of moviemaking back to the set thanks to their technology.

The final part of the NEXT Summit started with Andrew Rosen, CEO at Parqor, and Jack Davis, CEO of CryptTV, who tried to answer the question of whether streaming can become the leading means of discovering new films, and what the trends and opportunities are for the coming year. The last presentation was by Mark Ollila, CEO of Kast, an online streaming service that empowers its community to watch and interact together, and he suggested that livestreaming could be the future of cinema. The 2020 Cannes NEXT Summit wrapped with some final notes by Saluveer and AC Coppens.

You can watch the 2020 Cannes NEXT Summit by clicking here.