According to a panel at Sarajevo Film Festival, producers and distributors can learn from examples of religious-themed films released when selling films.
Neon’s content strategy executive Rob Williams of Farida Gubadamosi, senior programmer at Trida Film Festival and head of documentary at British production company Misfits Entertainment, Lizzie Gillett took part in a discussion entitled Integrity, Impact and Self-Sensorship for Crisis-Era Cinema hosted by Danielle Turkov Wilson, hosted by Danielle Turkov Wilson, host of Think-Film Imphation.
“Some of the very political films on the right worked very well,” Gillette said, quoting Alejandro Monteverde. The sound of freedomA religious-themed drama starring Jim Kabiesel, who earned over $250 million at the global box office in 2023.
“The top office documentaries for US box offices are pro-Christian content,” Gillett said. “We may not like films like that, but they make money. We must learn from it and be able to make films that have our own value and reflect what is important to us.”
“(Christian films) don’t wait for a traditional distribution system,” Williams said. “They put themselves in. It’s a parallel distributed infrastructure. They take things into their own hands. If you know you can reach your core audience in a targeted way, it’s really interesting.”
Wilson said Christian audiences can be defined as “core fanbase.” I know Christians like Christian movies, so I go and see all sorts of films that are branded as Christian content.”
She came to the panel with the idea that she “lost contact with the film’s fanatic approach.”
“Did we try to generalize all the films to a much larger audience?” Wilson said. “Are we too afraid to become a niche and go “that’s my concrete audience”? ”
Gbadamosi highlighted the important role of the film festival in finding, building and demonstrating film audiences.
“The film festival was not built to find distributors,” says Gbadamosi. “The majority of the film festival was built by people who couldn’t distribute the film, and they were built as a way of building an audience.
“You’re coming to Tribeca, you’re building a very specific New York audience that you can prove you have. You’re going to New Orleans, you’re building an audience in the South. You’re going to queer film festivals, you’re proof that you can have a queer audience. That’s what festivals mean.”
Targeting viewers should start even before the festival’s verse, Wilson said. “Be specific about who the segmented audience is,” the executive said. “Don’t wait for the festival to decide for you. Let them want you. Show them you bring audience value to your distribution.”
Gillett also encouraged producers to be willing to drop if the film project wasn’t working. “It’s okay if you stop filming,” she said. “You can make a choice – there’s an opportunity cost to keep going with the old thing. It’s always about the strategy of reaching the audience. If you feel you can’t reach the audience, it’s okay to put it down and start something new.”
Three panelists will be selected for the winners of the 20,000 euro in-kind prize, presented by Think-Film Impact Production, which was awarded at the Cinelink ceremony on Thursday.
The Sarajevo Film Festival will be held until Friday, August 22nd.
(TagStoTRASSLATE) Eastern Europe (T) Festival (T) SARAJEVO
