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Alive and Kicking: Company Strategies Today · Industry Insights - The EFM Podcast

• 0:00
  JOHANNA: Welcome to Industry Insights, the EFM podcast presented by the European Film Market of the Berlinale. My name is Johanna Koljonen. I'm a media analyst and experience designer based in Malmö, Sweden. Industry Insights, the EFM podcast puts a spotlight on highly topical and trend-setting industry issues, creating a compass for the forthcoming year. The year-round podcast is produced in cooperation with Goethe-Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA. This episode has been developed in partnership with the Berlinale Co-production Market. We're talking today about succeeding in the midst of challenging market transformations. What needs to happen in the industry is basically known, and especially the role of the producer is transforming. We need to diversify slates, find specific voices, and engage actively in building audience relationships for the work, the talent, and even ourselves. We must learn from each other, make alliances, find new partnerships, and new roles across the value chain. All of this to create new sustainable business models in a marketplace that's still finding its shape. It sounds exhausting, and it is a lot. But there are people out there who are doing this work. What does it look like in practice? How do they manage the risk and costs of change and experimentation? And how do they stay sane? My guests today are Didar Domehri from Maneki Films, as well as Maneki Stories in France. Welcome. And Roman Paul from Razor Film in Germany. Welcome.
• 1:27
  DIDAR: Thank you very much. Very nice being in this podcast with you, Johanna and Roman.
• 1:32
  ROMAN: Thank you very much for having me here. And hi Didar.
• 1:37
  JOHANNA: Roman Paul co-founded Razor Film over 20 years ago. He is a professor at the Film Academy Ludwigsburg and has been made by the Republic of France, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, a Knight of the Arts. And Didar Domehri founded Maneki Films now 15 years ago and has produced or co-produced over 20 feature films. Lately, she's had one in competition in Cannes every year, working with a range of filmmakers like Karim Aïnouz, Erige Sehiri, Alex Lutz, and Hlynur Pálmason. So I'm relying on both of your expertise to learn more about what the landscape actually looks like today for people who seem to be successful. Before I ask how you actually work, maybe I should also ask, how does it feel right now to have your job? Is the vibe good? Or are you super stressed?
• 2:25
  DIDAR: Well, I would say that I'm always amazingly passionate about my work. And I love producing films and the industry I'm working in. And at the same time, I would say, yeah, I'm quite stressed by the changes. And I'm questioning the way we're working all the time. But I think that's a very healthy thing to do, especially now.
• 2:51
  JOHANNA: What about you, Roman?
• 2:53
  ROMAN: I agree with Didar. The minute I focus on the specific projects, it feels the way it has always felt. And that is pleasant, exciting, stimulating, and challenging. Looking at the overall landscape, it's changing. But then on the other hand, we've always been saying that in this industry, oh, it's changing, it's changing, it's changing. When I started, I was thinking that this business is like working in water. It runs through your hand, it somehow stays the same, but it's always something new, and you cannot really grasp it. So in that way, it is a challenging situation, especially independent. And I am really excited that we started this group of producers working across borders, across continents, and empowering each other and ourselves in order to stay independent and to continue what we've been doing, like Didar, making films and also making interesting content, as it is called, for TV and streaming.
• 4:04
  JOHANNA: Yeah, this partnership is the creatives that you're referring to. So maybe we start there. How do you work? How does your company work? And how does it work as part of the creatives?
• 4:14
  ROMAN: Well, we call ourselves not a small company, but Boutique. I learned that early on, because, right Didar?
• 4:22
  DIDAR: Yeah, absolutely. We're Boutique, okay.
• 4:23
  ROMAN: We're Boutique or a manufacturer. That means we as owners know exactly what is going on in our company, where which project is standing, and where the challenges are, where the vibe is good, where it needs support. And so we want to stay and keep staying in direct contact with the projects that we are producing.
• 4:49
  JOHANNA: So how many are you? How big is the company?
• 4:52
  ROMAN: Actually, we have five people and then we have a lot of positions outsourced. So that way we could also survive the pandemic without support from the outside.
• 5:03
  JOHANNA: Yeah, that's fantastic.
• 5:05
  ROMAN: You never know which storm is going to hit you. So we are flexible in our size. When we have more projects in the company, we keep hiring more people on a project basis, and then also hire rent spots where these people can work. But that way we have a flexible size. My business partner Gerhard Meixner and I are more comfortable with a size that we can really feel and that we know we can also manage in times of crisis.
• 5:37
  JOHANNA: So the relationship to the creatives then how does that play in?
• 5:40
  ROMAN: Well, it started during the pandemic that we met every Monday on zoom speaking to each other, what the situation is like and how we could cooperate even being in isolation.
• 5:54
  JOHANNA: It's a similar companies in different countries, I should say.
• 5:56
  ROMAN: Yeah, it is. Yes, it is nine production companies in an international context across borders. And it was a very, very long process. We knew some of the companies in there already since a very long time since we have cooperated with them on different projects in the past. Some people were new to us, we got to know them. Then we met for the first time during the pandemic when it was possible in Germany. And over the course of the last years, it became a real group with the aim of also creating now a horizontally producer-owned production studio company across borders. So that it's not only a loose group of people having a chat every Monday at five.
• 6:48
  JOHANNA: You're not only sharing knowledge. Yes, you're also sharing knowledge and networks. You're also actually investing time and money together. Yeah. Yeah. What about you Didar? How big is your company and how do you work there? That is to say Maneki Films. And then what's about Maneki Stories?
• 7:04
  DIDAR: I would say exactly like Roman said, we are boutique. We are, as we say in French, artisans. And we're basically producing prototypes. So each film is different and our model is changing. Each film is a really different adventure and a different enterprise in a way when we're hiring so many people. But we need in the between to stay quite flexible and to be careful with our overheads because we never really know when our film are going to be shot, how long the development period will take. We can't really control this timing. We can have many different plans and project ourselves. But we need first of all to be flexible as producers. I think this is one of the biggest quality for a producer to have a vision, but to be flexible because it change all the time. And problems happens all the time. In my company, we are actually six people. We have quite a clear division of tasks. But as we are a small company, everyone is always aware of everything. And everyone also is in the decision of boarding a new director a new film because you know, we are closely working all together and spending so many years with a new project, a new director that is very important that the whole team feels connected to the project. And I've been so far questioning a lot the way that we as independent producers can keep on going and facing the industry changing. But as Roman said, it has always been the case. But recently with COVID, the streamers, the AI revolution, which is actually not a small revolution at all. It's a really a big question. I think that we'll talk about it later. Shall we still stay independent? Because independence is also a grant for, you know, our diversity to be able to produce and develop films that we want. That is not always based on rentability, but being able to discover voices and to produce new talents and grow with them. And of course, without forgetting the audience. But for me, it has been always important now as a producer and before as a sales agent to be able to discover new voices because these new voices, even if they don't make any money on the first or second feature, will become the big director of tomorrow. So for me, it has been always very important to be able to find a way to give the means and the financing for these new talents that no one really believes in. So as a producer, the development stage is really risky and costs a lot of money. So of course, in France, we are quite grateful because the CNC model gives us a lot of source of financing for this development stage. But I'm also producing foreign directors out of France. I'm basically producing 50/50 French directors and foreign directors. And as I'm coming from international sales, my DNA is quite international. I think like Roman, who has been in the acquisition when we met many years ago, I was in sales, you were acquiring. And I think that our very specific DNA of producers, not accepting borders and not stuck in making only national films is really coming from our passion and knowledge from this global industry. We have been traveling for the last 25 years. So when I'm passionate about a director, it could be in Latin America, in Asia, wherever, I would find a way to finance, develop his project. It's not as easy as when you're developing and producing national directors when your funding is really quite protective of the language and of the nationality of your director. But there are a lot of ways and also collaboration between different countries.
• 11:19
  JOHANNA: And we can also see perhaps a tendency where that many more countries are becoming more protective for political reasons, mostly about how the film funding is used when it comes to language and things like this. And that threatens co-production clearly.
• 11:34
  DIDAR: Yeah. And also in a world, I would say that more and more people are trying to find a recipe or guarantees when we are boarding a new project. Lots of people are trying to get IPs because today nobody knows what's going to work in TV or in features. It's becoming a miracle each time a film gets made and is successful in theaters or on platforms and on TV. So I think that a lot of people are fighting now for IPs. And as an independent producer, to be able to get those IPs, you need money. You need to be backed and as an independent facing the bigger groups that are also joining forces to get those IPs. It's not an easy thing. So when a couple of French female producers that I know proposed me to join a collective called Athena a year ago, I was very, very happy. And I think that it's aligned with the moment I was really questioning myself. How can I be more ambitious in development and allow myself to get more IPs and develop more? Because I think that this is the key of producing. Athena collective is basically a collective with eight French female producers that we launched a year ago, where we all together raised around 6 million euros with two insurance companies, MAIF and Aréas Assurances that made an investment in our collective, where we are all independent and we have different strategies and everything that basically it will allow us to have more means to launch stronger IPs and recruit more people in our companies and to be more ambitious, we hope, in the development of our project. And as you were saying, you know, today in Europe, there's so many different consolidations between bigger groups like Federation, Media One, Panijet, all around the world and in Europe especially. So where is the place of independent producers? And I think that the model of collective is amazingly smart. And I think in a small scale with Athena, we tried also to regroup as independent producers, keeping our identity and independence in our own companies, but helping each other with quite original model, which is that each company operates separately, but we can co-produce together if we want. And then there is a synergy and we are backing up each other also, while we will have to basically repay this loan that we have been granted to a certain extent. So there is a lot of solidarity between us financially. And this is where I founded Maneki Stories, because I wanted also to develop a new form of narration with TV series and I needed development and I needed time and people to work with me. So I have launched Maneki Stories just recently and Maneki Stories is part of Athena Collective.
• 14:49
  JOHANNA: Let's follow up on that, Roman. What is an independent producer? What does it mean for you to be independent or not?
• 14:59
  ROMAN: We operate differently than AI. We identify topics, aesthetics that we are interested in and see a potential for. In that way, we have not changed over the past, I must say. We curate our lineup. There is an idea behind it. It might be idiosyncratic, but these are artists that we believe in and that we would like to build up for the future. And we would like to make films that matter, that have relevance for an international audience, that are not only topic driven, but that are a filmic experience for audiences, be it in the theaters, be it in front of the small screen back home. That does not really matter. The ways there have changed and we adapt to that, of course. The way people interact with stories, but the way we select, the way we put together talents, the way we bring together people and see if it works or not, that is unique and that is probably also each independent producer's strength.
• 16:12
  JOHANNA: Could you get into a little bit more specifics about how your collective structures are working now?
• 16:19
  ROMAN: Well, in the past, we started an initiative that's funded by the European Union as well, which is called the Creative Connection. It brings together producers and writers from the respective territories and let them find and develop projects together without the pressure from the market space. We also create safe spaces without forgetting that the world as a whole is highly unsafe. This is why you need these islands. And of course, collectives such as Didar's or ours are also safe spaces. You need to sometimes be covered from the rain pouring down, otherwise you get too wet. We continued that in '25. As well, we have hired Romain Bessi, who used to run the Studio Canal and Nuun. He's actively working on structuring a forum for these companies, for getting together in a holding, keeping their DNA as companies, but also enabling them to interact with investors that can support and strengthen making their dreams a reality. Because yes, we're dreamers, but we're also people who make the dreams a reality. That's our job, I think, as a producer. That's sometimes what I answered when my parents were asking what I'm actually doing. Because it's from the outside.
• 17:57
  DIDAR: I think that you need to be quite practical on the model and at what you need, what you don't want. Here it was quite clear that all producers are going to stay independent, but we were willing to have fundings to be able to invest more in our respective companies based on our specific, respective needs. How we will reimburse the model, have a vision in the long-term basis, and what would be also the very original specificity of solidarity between all of us. Not only creating synergy in helping each other, but also backing each other on the financing part to a certain level. We had to try to work on all these aspects altogether. We also worked with someone who helped us to modelize this, Diane Cesbron, that worked on all the financial aspects, and also a lawyer company, Antavista. All that takes a lot of time, but before the whole practical aspect, you need to have a vision and also a philosophy around it. What is it that you really want, and then you see how you modelize it.
• 19:18
  JOHANNA: When we look forward to the very end where the audience is, there is clearly a transformation happening where we have had this model in the sector that some people are involved in funding and making the film, and then you hand it over to sales and acquisitions and distribution who are essentially in charge of marketing it. At the end, then we have the audience relationship, which is happening in the cinemas and so on. At the same time, the audience has had this strong emotional investment with the filmmakers and the talent, and sometimes even with production companies, or sometimes even with distributors we are seeing now. It's clear that the cycles of marketing and ownership of the story of a film and the journey of a film are shifting because the windows perhaps are becoming shorter, not so much in France, but in the world. Not every film that is made now, because we make so many, can have that traditional success and the traditional release even in cinemas. In some ways, the role of the producer is changing in relationship to the life cycle of the film. I wonder, do you have a direct relationship to the final audience, or do you feel that you're having to work in new ways, in some ways with the communication of the film?
• 20:28
  DIDAR: One of the first questions I always ask the directors I'm working with when we are doing this very first pact of working together, developing a script, spending like three, four years together, I'm like, what do you want the audience to feel when they will get out of your film in the theater? What is the feeling you want them to have? I think this is something that we try to remember each time we have a new draft of the script or even a new editing cut. This very first pact that we have between the producer and the director, we're trying to renew these vows the very first time we said, "We need to do this film and the audience will receive it that way." This is our first vision of how the audience will react to it. There are different steps to reach this audience. As producers, the very first audience that we will have is the industry through the sales agent of our film that is basically going to speak to distributors all around the world to propose them to distribute this film in their respective countries. When we're thinking marketing in the first place as producers, we're thinking the marketing for these people, these distributors all around the world. They are basically the first audience, our own distributor in our country, but also the other because we are producing films to be able to be seen as much as possible all around the world. This is the key role of our sales agent basically. We're trying as producers to have as much material for him to do a proper marketing, which is not a B2C marketing, but B2B marketing that is going to be totally different from the marketing that our own distributor will do to reach the audience in the theaters. It comes in different steps. We’re first thinking of the industry and then with our distributor, we're thinking of the audience and how they are going to communicate with the very final audience in theaters.
• 22:38
  JOHANNA: I think that's really interesting. It's a good distinction that you have a B2B task. Traditionally, I think perhaps many producers have not even thought about that as a kind of marketing job for themselves, but the fact that you can support it is already very strong.
• 22:54
  DIDAR: Yeah, it's very important.
• 22:55
  JOHANNA: Yeah. What about you, Roman? How do you see these changes?
• 22:58
  ROMAN: I couldn't agree more. That's what I can say. First, we think international market. Most of our films are also co-productions, which is not only for financial reasons, but also for cooperation in terms of content. You get a point of view from a different culture on what you're doing. That is usually different from the local feedback. You need to look how your film is going to be released. Is it hopefully a local success that then travels on back of the local success, that then travels on back of the local success or is it going to be a film for one of the A festivals and then being hopefully sold globally with a marketing campaign that is being distributed by the international distributor, aka the sales company. As Dida, we look at who we work with as a sales company and as a local distributor, of course. This also means that we choose from those who are interested, those of whom we think that their work fits best to the project. And this is also important because it means you respect their work and you trust them with the work. And it's an early on dialogue with them also in order to deliver the right material. And this has changed now over the years, of course, what you have to deliver. It's not only a making of person that runs around on the set trying to catch how people make a film. You need to do that differently these days. Recently, I listened to a very, very interesting case study from Hungary where they started to produce funny but simple to make content around each character, which they released in the forefield of the national release. Things that work quite well, you can experiment there. You need to be in close contact with the distributor and then let them do their work. Also, we are not a distribution company. We are a production company by design. And also, this is the way we were wanted. I've been working for national and international distribution. And now we do international productions. That's two different things, I think. And we have decided it that way. It's not that it happened by chance or so. I would right now not like to have an international distribution company. I would not like to do that work. I've been doing it and I have high respect for it. But our choice is also again a curatorial one, not only a financial one, who fits best to the project, who will bring it ahead the speediest and the most efficiently and in sync with what the filmmakers want to do.
• 26:09
  JOHANNA: I think, though, that when we look at the industry, I think for instance in Germany, an absolute majority, I can't remember how many percent now, but it's far over 50, I think, of the producers are living off production. That one of the changes that has happened in the last 20 years is that many find it increasingly hard to retain any ownership. And I am concerned that there is a structural effect that over time you do become alienated from the audience. Your audience becomes the industry, essentially. I don't know if you agree and how that connects to these ideas of building IP and building producer-owned companies and these kinds of things. How do you think about that?
• 26:46
  ROMAN: No, I don't think we become alienated from the audience. So often I am audience, for example. And of course we are closely affiliated with younger generations that are also audience. Also, when I go and see a film or watch a series, I am just audience. Perhaps in the end I can give a more elaborate reason why I enjoyed something, what I think worked especially well, where I think the makers of the work reached their goal, with me at least. But otherwise, I'm watching and I enjoy something or I don't. I admire certain aesthetic choices, narrative steps that they took. And therefore, I've never been in line with this "oh, we live in a bubble." The world is composed of an endless amount of bubbles anyhow. And you belong to different bubbles, starting with your family and so on. But I don't think that we are alienated from the audience. If I were so, that would be, I think, catastrophic.
• 28:04
  JOHANNA: Didar, what do you think?
• 28:07
  DIDAR: What I learned very early when I was selling films is, because I was passionate about a lot of directors in films and we couldn't always afford the filmmakers we wanted to work with or the type of films we wanted to get on board. And I always felt that you can't beat the bigger one anyway, or you can't beat an industry like Hollywood when you're an independent European producer. So you have to be special. And there's always room for a film that is special and content that is different. And original. And I think that I always try to stick to that, to be passionate about what we do. Always listen to the audience, of course, and to be connected to the industry, but still stick also on what we want to show and try to educate and show people things they're not expecting to see. And there's really a space for that. And the way that we are thinking marketing, why we are producing film and choosing those films, even if we don't have any money, there's so many ways for us also to produce site contents, to be able to connect in the future, the audience to what we're trying to say. Especially if it's very special and unknown and it's not coming from IPs. And when we see now the new shift of the younger audience, which is the most difficult one to analyze and to grasp for distributors, is the way they interact on TikTok on a film, and the way they totally change the fate of the success of a film. And we saw that recently in France and we're quite amazed. Suddenly when the community of young people on TikTok are passionate about a film, we know that the film's going to be very successful. So how we get from the moment we're shooting this film to these moments in TikTok when they're...
• 30:09
  JOHANNA: To somebody crying on TikTok.
• 30:11
  DIDAR: Yeah. And suddenly they are choosing one very specific bonus or content or extract for your film. And then they all talk about, and they're all passionate about creating communities about it and discussions. So I think this is what we're trying to understand now. And the people that we are choosing to work with us, PR, sales agent, et cetera, they all have to be connected also to this new reality of how we get into the audience and also give them what they need to have. We need to really think out of the box. The way that we promote, the way that we produce. We need to always try to think differently.
• 30:54
  JOHANNA: Both of you are involved in training activities from upcoming producers, which we're also grateful for. Thank you for that, Roman, as the head of studies in the German-French masterclass in Ludwigsburg. And you were our group leader at EAVE. So if we say that you're meeting producers who are still building up their companies or wondering even if they should be starting companies of their own, in the context of everything that is changing now, the kinds of changes that is happening, do you have some advice that you always give about if you go into the industry now or if you're starting out, what do you have to deliver to have a place in this marketplace right now? If somebody asks you, "How do I know if there's a place for me and my company here?"
• 31:36
  ROMAN: No, you have to make your place. There's no place for you. Make your own industry. You created yourself. This is how it starts. I always say the world, unfortunately, is not a safe space. It is as unsafe as it could get. So be prepared for that. In the course of the year where I'm also only co-head, I'm not doing that by myself, we try to get the younger audience exposed to all the input and also to all these adversary forces that they have to overcome. Being a producer also means you have to be resilient. Being a producer means you have to stay optimistic. You are in a way the captain of a ship. If the seas are rough, most of the times they are rough. We are always around Cape Horn or something like that. You need to be 100% sure that you're going to reach the port and that you come home either with the cargo that you have or with fish or whatever. But you need to also know how to navigate those waters. This is what you have to teach yourself. As Didar said, every film, every series, every show that we're making is a prototype. This also means we will make new mistakes every time. You need to allow yourself to do that. You need to be kind to yourself in order to continue. But you also need to be realistic and stay in constant touch with other ships and also with the mainland in order to see where you are navigating. Otherwise, you are just somewhere in space. What we do, for example, what I find is very, very important is going to a co-production market with a project with your director/writer. This is extremely helpful because sometimes in the beginning of a career, people make the mistake and think, "Oh, because I speak, people are per se interested." No, that's not the case. You must seduce them. You must attract them. You must convince them. This is not your family. These are not your parents who might have been so happy when you opened your mouth.
• 34:08
  JOHANNA: These are not your teachers at film school. At film schools, often you have a student experience where all of your ideas are being engaged with by interested adults. Industry at the beginning, not like that at all.
• 34:21
  ROMAN: No. What we're trying to do, for example, in the Atelier Ludwigsburg Paris, it is a market situation and it's only people coming in to teach who work in the industry right now. That exposes the young generation to a situation and takes also away the inhibitions and the fears of it. It is a normal process to have problems. It is a normal process to overcome resistance. It's a normal process to overcome people's fear of the new, which is something that has never been you. It's always there. So to make them accustomed to that is, I think, a very, very important thing. Their enthusiasm, their passion is where it all starts. This is what is important. It is important for them to nurture that beautiful core and to protect it in order to make it work in chemistry with the world around them.
• 35:27
  JOHANNA: You're talking about staying on top of a very changing marketplace while you are also learning the ropes of the industry and the element of risk in every project, as well as in challenging the norms of an industry because you are doing something new. This is also very complex. How do you advise young producers on this?
• 35:47
  DIDAR: It's always a miracle when we are doing a film, no matter the format of the film, short, long docs, AI. I think that you just need to create your own industry and your own space. You have to be special to get noticed out of the crowd and other people producing contents in our world more and more. You have to be really, really special and passionate about what you do and believe in it. It doesn't mean that you don't have to listen to people. That's why I think sharing is very, very important to be connected to the audience. Also, sharing with the other talents and the other producers. This is what we do at the Yahweh Producers Workshop. It is somewhere that we are trying to create a safe space so everyone can also share these difficult experiences because it's a long way to be able to achieve these miracles I'm talking about and to learn out of the mistakes and not to get burned because it's a very, very challenging job as a filmmaker, as producer, director. As producers, we have so many different challenges at not only financing level, but the artistic level, the human resources level. We are also dealing with a lot of emotions, fears, as Roman was saying. We are shrinks also. We need to be at the top of all that. We have this responsibility of this bigger team we're going to hire when we're shooting the film and also to be able to be at the top of a collective industry for a while in a healthy environment as well. This is very important. The way that we need to hire the people and to work with them, this is something that people are more and more aware of. How can we work in a healthier environment?
• 37:50
  JOHANNA: I did want to ask about that specifically from both of you because I know that many producers now are getting much better at creating, proactively creating these structures of ease. Also, we're seeing now calculations like, "Oh, it's actually cheaper to hire an extra person from the beginning than to pay for overtime." These kinds of things. We're seeing also practical solutions, but then they forget themselves. How do you two stay sane?
• 38:19
  DIDAR: The health issues, they're different layer to that question. The health issues in general in our industry, I think it's a very interesting topic, but that will take another podcast probably to talk about it.
• 38:30
  JOHANNA: How do you manage your own workload and all of these burdens of the stress and dealing with other people's emotions? Do you have any advice for that, Roman?
• 38:40
  ROMAN: Yeah. For me, it starts with the setup of the company. I have a partner in this company. It's 50/50. I'm not a person who likes to work by himself. There are people who can only do it by themselves. I worked for Hengameh Panahi at Celluloid Dreams and she was a one-woman show. Anyway, that you could follow or not, that depended on you, but Hengameh was Hengameh. I'm not like that. I need a person by my side and I like to be by someone's side. This is what we say also in class that people need to find out what type they are because they are two types. First of all, I have my business partner who's also one of my best friends. I spend so much time with him. We are a bit like brothers these days. When there's a problem, we always have each other to give feedback saying, "Okay, this year it has been quite a lot. We have to watch out. Next year we will have to hire a new staff because the projects are becoming real and we will not be able to do this workload in the constellation that we're in. We need to expand." These are conversations that we have. This is the first step. Then you sometimes need advice also from the outside. I don't think we are all park. We had someone sometimes now coming into the company guiding a group process so that also the employees can give feedback. Everyone is colleagues and then tell each other how they feel and what is going on and what we could improve. We had a first round of that and it proved tremendously successful, I must say. Personally, if you want to know, sometimes I look for counseling for myself if things get too much. Why not take in advice? It's not that I have the answers to everything. Not at all. I don't find them all in myself or perhaps the answers are there, but like so many things in life, I can't find them at that specific point in time. So always connect with others. Then we have the group now where we share each other's experience for good and for bad. This is important. We are islands, but then there are so many other islands and we can get in touch with them and we absolutely should get in touch with them. We should support each other and we should learn from each other. In that respect...
• 41:25
  JOHANNA: Didar, you're nodding.
• 41:27
  DIDAR: Yeah, I totally agree with what Raman says. Going back to the EAVE producers workshop, I think that the safe space that we are trying to offer the producers a participant is a place that they can learn from each other and help each other and it changed their lives. They can take radical decisions afterwards. They grow out of the experience and it's beautiful to watch. I think this is where you see the impact of how the collective can really make a change. It's very difficult, I think nowadays and in general, to stay isolated in its own belief and fear. So if you get connected to the others and trying to learn from each other and share experiences and tough ones and good ones as well, I think it's very important to share all kinds of experiences. It's the key. And It's funny also, I think that so many people think that what is the recipe to be successful in the industry or all that. For me, I think the opposite. I was watching an extract of Rocky the other day, the film Rocky. And there is a sentence that I just look for. I thought it was so much about us. Rocky Balboa says, "It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." No, it's really, it's not how much you can kick. It's how much you can still keep on going. So I'm always very admirative of all these people and producers that are still there making films, no matter the mistakes or failures they had, films they've done that didn't work out, but they're still keep on going and believing it and being passionate about it. This is what I'm really admiring. And I think that's also the key trends and big success and all that. It's quite a familiar how we can still be there for the upcoming years.
• 43:29
  ROMAN: Yeah. Going into pop references, for me, I always think, having worked in this industry now for almost over 20 years, for me, it's like the Bee Gees song, "Staying alive, staying alive." While you're singing that, you're having fun. But this is what it's about.
• 43:49
  DIDAR: It's Bee Gees and a Rocky Balboa.
• 43:51
  JOHANNA: But I do want to ask, in all of this, something entirely new comes in where nobody has the answers like AI. When somebody asks you, "How should I be thinking about AI now as a producer?" Do you have a short answer for that?
• 44:06
  DIDAR: Oh, yes. I think that this is the biggest revolution ever. I have never seen such a big revolution happening since I'm alive in the industry. And I think that what's coming, it's bigger than a tsunami and we really need to look into it and to play with it very quickly and to understand where we're going. No one knows. No one knows. It's going so quickly that it's absolutely fascinating and scary at the same time. But this is really the biggest revolution where we are living now, I think.
• 44:40
  ROMAN: Yes. Make yourself familiar with it. What I did when it came up, I bought theoretical books about it first place. I read, "What is it exactly? How does it work? Is it intelligence or is it a form of communication with an almost endless amount of data?" These things are very important to get them right first for yourself. And then stay curious. I'm taking classes. We are experimenting with it constantly in the company for better and worse results, but you have to stay on the ball and you have to stay curious how it will exactly affect us. There will be a lot of surprises on the way that we have not taken into consideration right now. This is also the charm, but you need to stay on top. I always think of myself also as a student. Absolutely. Recently I went to Madrid for the ACE series special. I really enjoyed sitting in a classroom, listening to other people's experience, learning from their experience. And yes, I'm a professor, but I'm a student at the same time. I think that this is really, really important that you stay curious and in a constant learning mode.
• 46:00
  DIDAR: I totally agree.
• 46:02
  JOHANNA: I love that. Thank you so much for this conversation and for your time, both of you. I could talk to you for hours, but I'm going to have to let you go back to your very intense work lives. Thank you for taking this time. 00:46:016] DIDAR: Thank you so much, Johanna. Thank you so much, Roman. It has been a pleasure.
• 46:20
  ROMAN: Thank you so much Didar, thank you so much Johanna.
• 46:24
  DIDAR: Thank you so much to my guests. If you like this podcast, please tell your friends about it and give us a five-star rating on the podcast platform of your choice. It really helps spreading the word. This season of Industry Insights has been produced in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA. This episode has been developed in partnership with the Berlinale Co-Production Market. Do tune in to future episodes of Industry Insights wherever you get your podcasts, or on the website of the European Film Market www.efm-berlinale.de. Thanks for tuning in. Bye.