Alongside the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, this year’s European Film Market (EFM) once again offers outstanding opportunities to continue the exchange with world sales companies, film institutes and production companies from around the globe.
Which films are about to be completed? Which projects deserve special attention right now? Who is producing with whom? Which topics are emerging as the next trends? Where is targeted funding available – and where are financing structures stalling? How strongly is political influence being felt? Where does pressure come from below, where from above? And ultimately: how are audiences responding?
Back-to-back meetings, an almost endless flow of information, and many warm encounters with people with whom you somehow grow older over the years (a colleague and I realized that, over the course of a professional lifetime, it adds up to almost an entire year spent at the Berlinale and the EFM) – as well as inspiring conversations with younger colleagues.
At the same time, the market provides the special opportunity to dive into brand-new films that are initially screened exclusively for sales scouts and festival programmers. The first promising building blocks for the FFC 2026 programme have already been discovered.
