The San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF) has hosted the fifth Creative Investors’ Conference, held this time on 22 and 23 September. The event was organised in partnership with CAA Media Finance within the scope of Spanish Screenings: Financing & Tech. At this edition, the festival also partnered with Cannes’ Marché du Film and its Investors Circle programme to bring along a group of private investors to participate in the conference as well as take part in educational workshops and mentoring.

Two panels shed light on ways to respond to a changing industry. Vincent Maraval, CEO of Paris-based sales and production company Goodfellas, and Roeg Sutherland, CAA’s co-head of Media Finance and International Film Group, took part in a conversation examining the processes and practices behind the success of Goodfellas. In a discussion titled “A New Approach to Streaming”, SSIFF delegate and advisor Wendy Mitchell moderated a conversation with Chilean brothers Juan de Dios Larraín (producer) and Pablo Larraín (director), who founded production outfit Fábula. They primarily discussed their new transactional video-on-demand (TVoD) platform Pijama, launched earlier this year.

Maraval noted that, in the last seven to ten years, local films have begun to claim significantly more of the market share in many countries, which has represented a huge shift. This has changed Goodfellas’ strategy regarding what films to buy. “You seem like you know things that other people don’t, and you’re always ahead with filmmakers,” joked Sutherland, also noting Goodfellas’ willingness to bet on talent.

Maraval attributed this to being driven by the filmmaker in the end – holding a “responsibility [towards] the ecosystem” by conversing with them and finding an economical solution that he hopes also benefits the film. He also shared the fact that he sees Goodfellas as primarily an international sales company, while on the production side, the outfit operates more as a co-producer possessing knowledge and access, rather than as a traditional producer.

Sutherland probed Maraval’s responses to other larger changes, such as the standing question about artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry. After joking that AI can be seen as a “sect”, Maraval explained how Goodfellas has ultimately started using it for the back office, which he sees as offering a “chance, if we use it well,” for improving organisation and other tasks. He also argued that AI “will give some young filmmakers the ability to push the boundaries of what they do”, including potentially allowing the creation of more films – thanks to a faster timeline – generating more profit.

Turning to a new solution, Juan de Dios Larraín addressed the brothers’ new venture, Pijama, as a model to solve a “problematic situation”, which is that many movies have no distribution in a wide swath of territories, including older, classic films. Pablo Larraín stated it plainly: “Most movies – 80% to 85% – that go to major film festivals around the world get no distribution.” However, he pointed out that they’re “not necessarily movies without an audience”. The two were also inspired by their experience of selling Sebastián Lelio’s The Wave at Cannes, which led to a gap for the UK and other key territories. They wanted to find a way to remedy this.

Their site enables a “very simple” and streamlined solution, empowering rights owners to upload titles to the platform (with non-exclusive rights), select territories and set a price for viewers, typically between $3 and $10. The brothers also explored some of their ambitions for the platform, including new mechanisms to sort and search, as well as an ambition for it to “become like a library or a dashboard” for cinema. Together, they hope to “help find a life in every territory” for each film out there, said de Juan de Dios Larraín.