During TIFF, Universal Film & Television Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Julia Weigl, Artistic Co-Director of the Munich Film Festival. She works closely together with the festival director Christoph Gröner on the overall strategy of the festival and covers the English-speaking territories, Scandinavia, and international series, as well as industry activities including creative collaborations for Munich audiences.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): What’s your definition of a good film?
Julia Weigl (JW): I think we have to admit as programmers that we all see movies differently. And that it always comes down to, is it a movie that touches you? Is it a movie that moves you? It can scare you. It can move you emotionally, as in crying or laughing. Does it touch you? That is very important, and it can touch you for different reasons. Because it’s a very interesting topic. It is beautiful and artistic. It can be for a lot of different reasons, but there has to be more than just one reason for me to program it.
(UM): What is the procedure for programming the festival is it done individually or is there a group deciding?
(JW): We are a group of four international programmers, that includes our festival director and me. But we are all in charge of different territories and when it comes to our own territories, we can decide on our own. But when it comes to our competition sections, we do have to agree. Not all of us, but there has to be a majority decision on whether we pick a title or not, and we’ll have a discussion. We are currently working on diversifying our curatorial team and we will start working with a group of program scouts in the futuere. However, we don’t have any submissions. We are really a curated festival.
(UM): So, you only pick films from the other festivals?
(JW): When it comes to international titles, we pick movies from other festivals. We require them to be at least the German Premiere. But we also scout. I travel to festivals, I meet filmmakers, I meet producers, I meet funding institutions, and I get films recommended. We do pick a few precisely curated World Premiere as well for our international sections – we see ourselves as the launching platform for German titles and a very carefully picked handful of international productions.
(UM): But no open submissions?
(JW): No. People can reach out to us, they can find us on our website, but there’s no official open submission and there’s no submission fee either. We also program and curate our German section. One competition section that has a submission is our German TV section.
(UM): There are lots of discussions these days about Berlinale and the fact that the minister of culture decided to remove the dual management structure. What is the relationship between the government and your festival? Could the government interfere in the affairs of your festival?
(JW): I mean we are very lucky on the one side in Germany that we do have public money going into the festivals. All of us big festivals are based on public money. It always depends on whether your board is part of, let’s say the national Ministry of Culture, or like in our case, it is the Bavarian State, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, and the city of Munich that forms our board. Usually, we can all act freely, but of course, we have to pitch or defend our vision and ideas, and how we want to move forward to our board. But that’s just like how any institution works. That doesn’t affect any of our artistic choices. Programming-wise, we are completely independent.
(UM): I talked with a programmer at another festival and it was only short contract work, does your festival have permanent positions for programmers?
(JW): We are all freelancers, but we have a contract that goes around the entire year. That is very typical of festivals. Programmers are not employees; they’re usually freelancing or free independent contractors. We all freelance with other companies or we have other jobs as well. I am a journalist, so I host podcasts and write and work as a moderator for several other festivals.
(UM): Is it easy for your festival to secure venues? Because I see that is a major issue for many festivals.
(JW): Funding for film festivals hasn’t increased, a lot of festivals have less money on their hands because their funding is getting a little bit reduced. And because we are all still recovering from the pandemic governments all over the world have to tackle a lot of issues. However, we are lucky that we have a lot of year-long partnerships with local cinemas. They trust us and we are working hand in hand to find a solution for the future.
(UM): How are you addressing diversity at your festival?
(JW): We organised a big conference on representation in film in 2022. That was our first big independent industry conference outside the time frame of FILMFEST MÜNCHEN. We partnered up with the British Film Institute, we partnered up with the local film fund, the Bavarian Film Fund, and we partnered up with the evangelical Protestant Academy a little outside of Munich. They gave us their space. It was very much about the needs of the German film industry and we wanted to create a space where dialogue is possible. We felt like we needed a space outside of Film Festival Munich to do that. To cater an entire weekend to the topic of access, diversity, and representation.
Because I do think that we are very much behind in Germany on that topic. There’s a lot of work to be done. We have to commit to it, but it should be in the most sustainable way and it should be in a way that is open to dialogue. Because it’s all about access and you don’t want to lack or not give access to someone else. It should be really about how we come together and form the future. It needs to be tackled by the institutions. We need new voices to shape programs and festivals. We need young filmmakers showing us their works and then we will see more diversity on screen. To me, it’s more about access and not diversity.
(UM): I had a conversation with a few women filmmakers here, and when we were talking about the Canadian situation, they told me that they feel that if you are, for example, a white woman, you have less chance right now because Canadian institution cares more about non-white female filmmakers. But I had the same conversation with the programmer at Venice and he told me that if you look at the lineup at Cannes the majority of the filmmakers who are competing in the main competition are French, white, and very privileged. I’m just curious about this topic and your opinion because it seems like you’ve researched diversity and gender representation.
(JW): You know, I think it always depends on the festival and the country you look at. Of course, at the oldest and most established festivals worldwide, like Cannes, access is limited. However, the festival went through a lot of change in recent years. But then, on the other hand, we have a festival like Sundance. Sundance started as the home of independent cinema. What is the home of independent cinema now? It is very much a home of marginalised voices, as in new voices, fresh voices, voices that didn’t get heard for a very long time. It’s giving space and access to people who might not have had the chance to be seen years ago. So, it’s really what is your identity as a festival and what you choose your identity to be. I think Sundance and Cannes are on two different ends of things when it comes to choosing what you want to stand for.
(UM): I’m going to Munich for the first time in February and noticed it’s very different from Berlin, Munich very much reflects Bavaria, and I was wondering if you bring the history of Munich and the city into your festival?
(JW): Interesting you mention that because we don’t necessarily when it comes to our programming, but with regard to our identity as a festival, we certainly play with the city of Munich. Because what comes with Munich, apart from the history is a certain kind lightheartedness, especially in the summer. For example, we’ve established a forum called the Beergarden Convention, because for decades the German film industry would meet in Munich at the beer gardens, at the Isar River, and there would be informal gatherings and meetings and a lot of handshake deals. Whereas Berlin has an official market, you need an official market badge, so everything is very formalized.
We want to keep that Bavarian lightheartedness to meet at a beer garden alive. Our festival is in the summer and the Isar River and beer gardens play a huge role. We also have a lot of great cultural and art institutions. There is a fantastic art scene in Munich and we are trying to establish more of a relationship with other cultural institutions, to benefit from that diverse cultural scene in Munich, which is something that we’ve done for the last five years.
(UM): I was at Venice, and a filmmaker spoke about how they didn’t like a film but her agent encouraged her to do it because it had a more left-leaning ideology and thus had a better chance at the festivals.
(JW): Why do you think that is? I know you want to ask me this question, but I kind of want to know your take on this.
That is interesting to hear. The messaging-ness of certain movies is definitely a problem right now, but I think that it has to do with the political landscape and whether you look at Europe, the United States, the UK, or what’s been happening in Russia, there’s a tendency towards right-wing parties and nationalism again. I think that scares a lot of people. When it comes to cultural institutions, and festivals are cultural institutions, their core values are freedom of speech, tolerance, open dialogue and democratic values. We live in very complex and conflicted times, thus it is even more important to create spaces where artists from all over the world can showcase and talk about their films. And we festivals are the contextualisation of those works.
When the Russian War started and a lot of festivals chose not to showcase any Russian movies, we had that discussion as well. We decided that we would still feature two of the works of Kirill Serebrennikov. Serebrennikov in his own country is considered super left-wing, but he is still a Russian filmmaker and some of his money is still from politically problematic people. It’s an issue that you have to consider. But we decided back then that we wanted to feature his films because his films show us a view of Russia that we don’t get to see a lot. You always have to consider different factors, and then very often an open conversation with the artist himself or herself can be a key factor. We had a very long Q&A session with Serebrennikov after the screenings of his film. That can be a key factor in tackling more controversial subjects.
(UM): Many festivals struggle with an audience that predominately is older, is that the case for your festival? And if so, how are you trying to reach younger audiences?
(JW): I think we all have that same issue, cinemas and festivals worldwide. However, we do notice a chance.Recently in Germany, two German films attracted very young audiences. Teenagers just flooded the cinemas. There has been quite some change in storytelling and great case studies on what young audiences want to see. With regard to our strategies and attempts: we’ve tried a few things in recent years and one was we went to schools. We invited classes to join us for individual screenings and then we built workshops around that, extended Q&As to really bring the medium of film and cinema to young kids and not necessarily just have them come to us.
(UM): So, you don’t feel that it is a problem of programming?
(JW): You’re talking to someone who is really interested in the next generation of moviegoers. I always pick a few titles I know are something that young kids are interested in, and it can be as easy as programming coming-of-age movies. When you have a young protagonist, then it is something that a young person can relate to. I mean, there are tons of movies out there that might be interesting to young kids, but we have to program those films. And we have to contextualise this movies and show young folks that movies and cinema can be fun!
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