Easy to Criticize, Impossible to Replace: Rethinking the Festival

Film festivals are easy to criticize but much harder to imagine away. At a time when works struggle to be discovered, financed, sold and seen, festivals remain among the few spaces where works are selected, celebrated, debated and experienced collectively. Yet their role can no longer be taken for granted. As series have developed their own festivals, and interactive and digital media face similar challenges of visibility and legitimacy, the festival model is already expanding beyond film alone. This session examines what only festivals can still do, how they can renew audiences and protect their independence, and how their models must evolve for them to remain engines of discovery and circulation rather than relics of the industry.