Saturday mornings at the Cannes Film Festival are usually reserved for oceanside brunch, shopping the Rue d’Antibes or (for some Hollywood types) finally getting home from Friday night’s parties.
CAA broke the pattern at this year’s fest with a pedigreed summit on a dizzying list of challenges currently facing the movie business – particularly the art house fare that Cannes loves to reward, the type that CAA is instrumental in packaging and selling to global buyers.
Dubbed “The Future of … Film Symposium”, the mega-agency welcomed talent like Darren Aronofsky, James Gray (“Paper Tiger”), Nadine Labaki (“Capernaum”) Whit Stillman (“Love and Friendship”) and Juan Antionio Bayona (“Society of the Snow”) for a series of conversations – covering theatrical windows, artificial intelligence, audience attention spans and emerging models to finance film.
CAA co-hosted the event with Finch & Partners in Antibes, at the stunning Villa Dorane (owned by art collector and photographer Jean Pigozzi). Pressure was low at the off-record event, meaning talent and top execs could share unfiltered conversations about the obstacles they face in the present moment.
CAA Media Finance boss Roeg Sutherland recruited an impressive list of leaders from the corporate and indie spaces including: Efe Cakarel of Mubi; Noah Sacco of A24; Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics; Ryan Werner and Jeff Deutschmann of Neon; Peter Kujawski of Focus Features; Sanford Panitch of Columbia Pictures; Justin Wilkes of Imagine Documentaries; Ben Kramer of Black Bear; Sundance Film Festival head Eugene Hernandez; Netflix awards guru Lisa Taback; and CAA’s Megan Crawford and Sarah Schweitzman.
