Europa Distribution will continue its longstanding partnership with the San Sebastián International Film Festival once again during its 2026 edition. This year, the partnership will bring together 25 distributors for an exclusive workshop centred on audience design from Monday 21 to Wednesday 23 September.

The closed workshop will be led by audience design consultant and trainer Benjamin Cölle. It will tackle audience design as a creative and collaborative film distribution practice. In Cölle’s words: “Audience design represents an innovative and transformative approach to the development of audience engagement strategies that has emerged as a response to the evolving challenges faced by independent and arthouse cinema in the contemporary media landscape.”

Participants will use two films as case studies for the practical part of the workshop: Bird by Andrea Arnold, released by Kim Foss (Camera Film, Denmark); and Dahomey by Mati Diop, released by Claire Honegger (Filmcoopi, Switzerland). The sessions will be split across several different days, with the workshop starting on Monday and closing the following day.

On Wednesday, Europa Distribution and Europa International will join forces again to hold the third edition of their closed working session between distributors and sales agents dedicated to the collaboration and cooperation between these two sectors.

In light of the partnership between Europa Distribution and the San Sebastián International Film Festival, distributors participating will also attend festival activities such as work-in-progress screenings from both Europe and Latin America, and networking events.