Tanja Meissner is no stranger to Berlin. For more than two decades, the European film industry veteran has been a familiar face at Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM) from her time as a sales and acquisitions exec at French outfits Memento Films International and Celluloid Dreams.
But at this EFM Meissner is in the driving seat, heading up the market as the new director of Berlinale Pro, a newly-created position that gives her oversight duties for all of Berlin’s industry sections.
Over the course of the market, which runs Feb. 13-19 alongside the Berlin International Film Festival, she’ll play host to some 12,000 film professionals from more than 140 countries, with more than 600 exhibitors setting up their stalls to shop cinema.
It’s no secret the indie film industry is in crisis. With box office levels still well below pre-COVID heights and inflation costs pushing budgets up, just as global streamers pull back from indie movies, film producers, sellers, and financiers are getting squeezed.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of her Berlinale Pro debut, Meissner discusses her plans to shake up the EFM, new initiatives like the Gen Z Audience and Distributor Awards, and why she thinks data is the key to the indie industry’s survival.
What have been the biggest changes you’ve made to the EFM in your inaugural year?
I’ve been coming to the EFM as a participant for a long time, and I’ve always appreciated working in Berlin because it has this hyper-efficient infrastructure that has been built over many years. Everything is really easy to attend, everything is close by. So I don’t think I have to reinvent the wheel. My main focus remains us being a trading platform for rights holders and buyers. That’s our core audience. But business is very closely intertwined with networking, and markets are also social events. I was able to put in place more opportunities for networking, for creating this close connection between networking and business-making. It’s really key to give people the opportunity to connect.
One of the important changes [Berlinale festival director] Tricia [Tuttle] put in place is this Berlinale Pro setup where we are trying to create more synergies between all the different initiatives for our industry participants. It’s sort of a full-circle industry infrastructure that we wanted to offer, creating formats like our Breakfast Club, which is open to producers with a market badge, where you can mingle while having breakfast and maybe a tech company will present something in a casual way. We have the Happy Innovation Hour in the afternoon, which is similar. We have daily networking sessions in our Doc Salon. We have Dine & Shine with the Berlinale Talents, which is by invitation, but it’s also an opportunity to mingle for experienced market participants and newer entrants.
What’s the mood of the market at the moment?
The economy has put a damper on the independent film industry, the arthouse industry, probably more than elsewhere. They really feel it and we can’t ignore that financial pressure. My clients are increasingly cost-sensitive. I am too, but it was imperative for me to keep EFM prices competitive for participants. So we’ve kept our prices the same while dealing with the same challenges, like inflation, as everyone else.
I think everybody’s struggling to come up with sustainable business models. Many people are moving away from pure risk toward collaboration, and I think that’s a smart approach. We need to move towards more collaboration because I think that’s a win-win situation. If there is a vibrant film culture in all sectors and domains, this will grow the audience for everyone.
When I see these new initiatives, these cross-border initiatives, people are forming groups like The Creatives, making co-production more like creative collaboration, I think that’s really interesting because it brings a broader range of perspectives and enriches storytelling and narrative.
One issue we need to deal with is sustainability. We need to get up to speed with green shooting, we want to be very mindful of our footprint. At the same time, everybody has to find resources to make substantial investments in digital infrastructure and there’s audience development that needs to be done. All this is really challenging. There are a lot of tools, but they are still expensive to implement. AI is particularly tricky because its a technology that is both really empowering but at the same time incredibly disruptive.
You’ve introduced two awards to the market this year, the Gen Z Audience Award and the Distributor Award. What’s the idea behind those?
With the Gen Z award, I always wanted to organize a co-production forum where project ideas are presented to potential co-producers and to representatives of the target audience, especially the younger generation. To make them feel welcome in the industry and create an intergenerational exchange, to give our event a cultural relevance for a younger audience.
With the Distributor Award we want to recognize a crucial part of the value chain that I felt was under-recognized. A lot of prizes at festivals are reserved for filmmakers and producers. But distributors play a key role in our industry. Even when we talk politics, about the importance of fostering mutual understanding, distribution has a powerful role to play, there’s a big cultural added value in distribution. It reinforces democracy.
Where are you drawing the young people from to vote for the Gen Z award?
They’re film students from France and Germany, but not necessarily only French and German. They’re from film schools and are between 20 and 28 years old. This year there are five jurors and they can engage the producers, ask questions, and read the outlines in the production catalog before giving feedback. One of the positive developments I’ve seen is with Letterboxd, which has brought a revolutionary shift in how young audiences are discussing and engaging with cinema. It’s the democratization of film criticism. I think it’s especially notable for films outside of mainstream attention.
I think this is all connected because data is the key to addressing this audience. We know that audience building can only be achieved by having a close customer relationship and the management of this consumer relationship will be done through data, with AI, and technology. That’s why it’s so important for us to get better acquainted with this technology, to upskill ourselves, because that’s going to help us engage more with this audience. We have to become this data-driven marketplace, that’s how I see the future of the EFM over the next three to five years.
