With major industry shifts happening simultaneously - the Academy rewrites Best International Feature rules, Netflix commits to theatrical windows for Greta Gerwig's Narnia, and NATO holds closed-door meetings with European filmmakers - we discuss the fundamental question: How relevant is cinema?

This episode explores how development cycles lag behind cultural moments, why festival-qualifying films now bypass national committees, what streamer theatrical commitments actually mean for windows and revenues, and whether military-cultural partnerships constitute narrative influence or healthy consultation.

Links:

🔗 Greenlight Analytics on Production Cycles out of Sync with Culture

🔗 New Academy Awards Rules for International Film

🔗 The Guardian on NATO meetings with European Filmmakers

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on LinkedIn.

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg).

How is one small country building a golden era of cinema while larger markets struggle? Kjersti Mo, CEO of the Norwegian Film Institute since 2019, shares the strategy behind Norway's recent Oscar wins, Berlin and Cannes successes, and multiple European Film Awards. Her insights reveal a roadmap for sustainable, culturally relevant audiovisual production in the age of consolidation, streaming, and geopolitical uncertainty.

Plus:

• RTL buying Sky Deutschland for up to 527m EUR
• WGA’s new deal and what that says about our industry
• How a charity event became a massive YouTube phenomenon in Poland

Links:

🔗 Norwegian Film Institute Strategy 2026-2029

🔗 European Commission approving purchase of Sky by RTL

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on LinkedIn.

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg).

In this deep-dive episode, Joanna and Fabian pull back the curtain on how they actually run their production companies in the age of AI. They’re sharing insights, and discussing specific tools, workflows, and philosophies driving their daily work. From practical implementation of AI agents, automation platforms, to self-hosted European infrastructure - an essential guide for creative professionals navigating digital sovereignty, data protection, and smart AI adoption.

Plus: The joint statement regarding the AgoraEU proposal and the UK Creative Europe petition, to the revealing statistic that 50%+ of internet traffic is now done by AI bots.

Links:

🔗 AgoraEU Joint Statement

🔗 SIGN HERE: Petition on UK’s return to Creative Europe

🔗 AI Bots create more that 50% of today’s internet traffic

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on LinkedIn.

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg).

With Cannes 2026 fresh off the announcement and CinemaCon underway, The Sideletters explore the festival landscape, US box office recovery, and dive deep into global co-productions with Brazilian producer Leonardo Mecchi, whose film Elephants in the Fog just landed in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

Discover how cross-border co-productions work, what it takes to build equitable partnerships across economic imbalances, and how Brazilian cinema survived the Bolsonaro era through resilience and international collaboration.

Key Topics:

• first thoughts on the Cannes 2026 competition lineup

• US Box Office & Cinema Culture

• Warner-Paramount merger opposition: 1,000+ Hollywood creatives sign open letter

• Leonardo Mecchi: Global co-production dynamics and decision-making structures, power imbalances based on funding, experience, and economic differences, how treaty systems enable cross-border partnerships (Brazil-Germany treaty as gateway)

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on LinkedIn.

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg).

In this deep-dive B2B episode, Jennifer Sabbah-Imagine and Fabian Massah compare the theatrical film financing structures of Europe's two largest cinema markets: France and Germany. Discover and discuss with us!

Key Topics:

• French Cinema Financing: The CNC, broadcaster obligations, Sophica vehicles, and regional funds

• German Cinema Financing: ARD/ZDF duopoly, and the Rundfunkräte governance challenge

• Box Office Trends 2019-2025: France's 26.5% decline vs Germany's 4.5% growth momentum

• National Language Films: How French and German films are performing in their home markets

• The Role of Regulation: Mandatory investment requirements and their impact on film production

• Broadcaster Obligations: Legal requirements in France vs voluntary investment in Germany

• Recent Reforms: Germany's new 8% investment law and why it's not enough for theatrical cinema

• Tax Incentives & Private Investment: SOFICA, regional funds, and diversified financing models

• Cultural Policy & Political Challenges: Defending public broadcasting in an era of critique

• Market Strategy: What Germany can learn (and innovate) from the French model

-> CNC Financing Scheme

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on LinkedIn.

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg).

Note: Our virtual studio let us down this week - bear with us on the audio.

Europe just got a brand new rulebook for TV series co-production. And OpenAI quietly killed Sora, its much hyped video-generating product.

In this episode of The Sideletters, Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine, Fabian Massah and Joanna Szymanska dig into two stories that signal a major shift for the European creative industry.

First: Jennifer breaks down what the Council of Europe's new Convention on Co-production of Series actually means in practice. It was signed at the Séries Mania Forum on March 26 by nine countries: France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Georgia, Montenegro, Malta and Luxembourg (not including Germany... yet, we hope).

Then: OpenAI shut down Sora. Less than two years after its splashy debut. The team unpacks what that says about OpenAI's strategic overstretch, how Claude and Anthropic quietly took over the professional AI space, and what the collapse of the Disney/OpenAI deal reveals about how Big Entertainment is really thinking about AI and IP.

The conversation gets provocative: Is AI-generated content a threat to independent European producers? Or a window of opportunity? Will audiences accept full-AI mainstream series while still craving human-made originals? And could a European token tax actually redirect AI profits back into the creative economy?

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on LinkedIn.

-> The New EU Convention on Co-Production of Series

-> The Guardian on Sora being closed

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg).

Note: Our virtual studio let us down this week — bear with us on the audio.

Is culture just a nice-to-have for society, or a superpower driving economic and social progress? In this episode of The Sideletters, Joanna Szymanska and Fabian Massah dig into UNESCO's International Decade of Culture and the Reshaping Policies for Creativity report to challenge how we measure success in the creative industries.

You'll hear candid insights on why box office numbers don't tell the whole story.

Fabian shares the behind-the-scenes model of "Symphony of Now" - a documentary that convinced a car brand to invest without appearing in a single frame. Joanna unpacks how Canadian policy metrics now reward female filmmakers and indigenous storytelling, and why South Korea's cultural exports exceed those of engineering giants like Samsung.

The conversation moves beyond money to the harder question: What's the real value of culture?

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on ⁠LinkedIn⁠.

→ RE / SHAPING POLICIES FOR CREATIVITY - UNESCO https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000397330?posInSet=1&queryId=53c2be71-1cd7-4fa4-a98e-1ebfc525fcee

→ UNESCO CULTURE INDICATIORS 2023 https://whc.unesco.org/en/culture2030indicators/#:~:text=The UNESCO Culture|2030 Indicators,transversally across many other sectors.

→ CANADA SUCCESS INDEX (2021) https://telefilm.ca/wp-content/uploads/tfrfconsultationeng-final-5mars2021.pdf

→ OECD https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2022/06/the-culture-fix_fda3a600/991bb520-en.pdf

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg)

Note: We just started. Still fine-tuning our sound.

In Episode #006 of The Sideletters, we explore the forces reshaping European series production with Francesco Capurro, Director of Series Mania Forum, and on what to expect at this year’s edition.

He also speaks about why co-productions aren't optional anymore, they're essential, about the new EU legal framework that is unlocking international partnerships, and the European vs. the American models for creative teams in series.

Also in this episode:

Joanna's breakdown on AI predicting the Oscars, and why diversity in governing bodies changes what algorithms can never predict.

→ [Series Mania Forum](https://seriesmania.com/forum/)

→ [Prompt used by Joanna](https://files.studiomassah.com/s/SmpXsJZ7w7tFw4E)

→ Links to documents mentioned by Joanna:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2026-0066_EN.pdf

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2026-0066_EN.html

https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/media-centre/house-of-lords-media-notices/2026/march-2026/uk-creative-industries-face-a-clear-and-present-danger-from-generative-ai-government-must-not-sacrifice-our-outstanding-creative-capacity-for-speculative-ai-gains/

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5901/ldselect/ldcomm/267/26702.htm

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on [⁠LinkedIn⁠](https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-sideletters).

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg)

*Note: We just started. Still fine-tuning our sound.*

In Episode #005 of The Sideletters, Joanna and Jennifer have a conversation with Kristina Trapp, CEO of EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs), on 35 years of training international producers and why success isn't just about money. How EAVE's Impact Think Tank imagines a better industry through equity, inclusion, and social responsibility. Plus: an exclusive outlook on upcoming workshops, Creative Europe MEDIA's critical role, and why producers in war-torn countries without funding inspire her most.

Trapp's message: "You are not only working in this industry, you are the industry. You are agents of change."

Also in this episode:

Fabian's deep dive on the Great Consolidation (Paramount-Warner Bros, Showmax shutdown, Banijay-All3Media merger) and what previous consolidation eras teach independent producers about positioning for what comes after.

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris), Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) and Fabian Massah (Berlin/Hamburg)

→ EAVE

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on ⁠LinkedIn⁠.

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Note: We just started. Still fine-tuning our sound.

In Episode #004 of The Sideletters, Joanna and Jennifer sit down with Katharina Gellein Viken, CEO of Metrotone and creator of the Raynmaker Project, to discuss what it actually looks like to build an AI-native production company in Europe.

• Kat's journey - from producing Norway's Strictly Come Dancing to rebuilding her company around AI
• How a small production company turned "disadvantage" into competitive advantage
• Ra
• The AI tool Kat built that fingerprints scripts to prevent unauthorized LLM training
• Practical advice: Which AI models to use, how to evaluate ethics, where to start
• Why "human-first creation" could be the most valuable pitch in the AI era

Hosted by Jennifer Sabbah-Immagine (Paris) and Joanna Szymanska (Warsaw) today. (Fabian Massah will be back next week)

→ AI & The Creative Professional Podcast

→ Screenburn App

→ “Say Chickabang!” - Raynmaker

👉 Connect with The Sideletters community on ⁠LinkedIn⁠.

The Sideletters is a weekly European B2B conversation on film, tech & future business. New episodes every Wednesday.

Note: We just started. Still fine-tuning our sound.