The Zurich Film Festival has been bringing together established industry representatives and new talent with their ZFF Academy program since 2006. This year, the HFPA is proud to partner with the Zurich Summit and thus support the newly added ZFF Summit Climber program for up-and-coming talent in the field of film sales and distribution.

After an application process, eight junior executives were chosen to learn from the best. “We have a lot of industry heavy hitters from Los Angeles and New York in town,” explains ZFF Artistic Director Christian Jungen. “We want to give young people the chance to learn from these veterans like Tom Quinn, CEO of Neon, or Roeg Sutherland, Co-Head of CAA Media Finance. We want to help emerging talents to get their foot in the door into the big arena.”

The program puts a special focus on understanding transatlantic economic and financing structures. “We learned a lot,” said Fanny Gavelle who joined The Festival Agency in France as sales manager and business development coordinator in 2020. “Being just us in a room with one of these mentors and being able to ask questions was really helpful.” The Summit Climbers were also able to network with, among others, Sony Pictures Classics Co-Presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, recipient of the Game Changer Award at ZFF, Patrick Wachsberger, producer of this year’s Academy Award Best Picture CODA and Emilie Georges, Memento Films International/Paradise City CEO and producer of films like Call Me By Your Name and My Salinger Year.

According to Christian Jungen, one does not have to look far to see how fruitful these opportunities at the Zurich Film Festival are. “Just yesterday I welcomed Vamos a la Playa producer Bettina Blümner on our green carpet who told me she was part of the ZFF Academy program 10 or 12 years ago and met her business partner here. They were sitting at the shore of Lake Zurich and pondered why they shouldn’t form a production company together.” Another ZFF discovery returned to the Swiss city this year to receive the Golden Eye Award: Eddie Redmayne. In the third year of the Festival, a then-unknown Redmayne walked the green carpet in support of the opening night film Savage Grace in which he appeared alongside Julianne Moore. “It was my first Festival,” Redmayne said in his Golden Eye acceptance speech. “I already got some jobs as an actor, but also still worked in a pub.”

“Nurturing new and diverse talent in the film industry is at the core of the HFPA’s mission and so we are delighted to partner with the Zurich Summit and support their ZFF Summit Climber program,” said HFPA president Helen Hoehne who attended the Festival Summit for the first time. She also participated in the panel on the future of Award shows with Matthijs Wouter Knol, CEO of the European Film Academy, and award-winning producers Greg Shapiro (The Hurt Locker) and John Lesher (Birdman).

“Coming to the Zurich Film Festival and having an opportunity to talk about the future of award shows was important not only for the Golden Globes but for the entertainment industry as a whole,” said Hoehne. “Reimagining the Globes to focus on bringing back the fun atmosphere and make it entertaining for the audience watching around the world is going to be the key to making award shows successful again.” The panel agreed that it is a challenge to get viewers to tune in to award shows these days, but also that audiences love great movies and want to celebrate them – and that the award season is useful when it comes to finding larger audiences for challenging films like The Hurt Locker. “It was amazingly important for the success of that film,” explained Greg Shapiro. “It reached a worldwide audience because of the advantage of the awards season.” He added that the Golden Globes were the “most fun” of all the awards shows and he seemed to think its telecast, which includes film and TV/streaming but no below-the-line technical awards, had an advantage over the Oscars. “More people would watch it if it were shorter and it was focused on the awards that people actually have an appreciation for best actor, best picture, etc. that are perceived as glamourous. But I for one would be disappointed if the technical awards were no longer part of it.”

Many Summit attendees expressed their support for the return of a televised Golden Globes. “I am very happy that Helen Hoehne was at this panel and said the Golden Globes are back,” said ZFF’s Christian Jungen. “I am personally very happy about that because as Greg Shapiro, an Academy Award winner said, the Globes are the most fun show. We wanted to see if European shows are taking the place of the Golden Globes or if the Globes can hold their position. And after the panel, it seems the Globes will hold the position as a pacemaker for the Oscars.”

Hoehne was also honored to participate on the panel of Leading Females in Film with the filmmakers Elena Avdija and Laura Kaehr who both have documentary films, Cascadeuses and Becoming Giulia respectively, at the festival. Despite the efforts to lift up women in the industry, the numbers are still bad: according to a study from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, in 2021’s top films, females represented 35% of major characters and 34% of all speaking characters in US films.

Representation matters and Hoehne was proud to share with the audience that the HFPA member and voting body is 52% female and almost equally diverse, and the members of the Board are two-thirds women and one-third diverse. “The most rewarding thing at the Leading Females in Film panel came after it was over when young women, embarking on their own careers, came up to me to thank me for raising important issues about mentoring, female empowerment and opportunities for women,” said Hoehne. “It reminded me of my own career and how at key moments having examples of other successful women competing in a male-dominated profession showed me what was within my grasp. I hope I was able to do the same for them.”

The Zurich Film Festival continues until October 2, 2022.