As Filmfest Hamburg gets underway, German buyers are out in force to view the homegrown and international films that could elevate their release
As Filmfest Hamburg gets underway, German buyers are out in force to view the homegrown and international films that could elevate their release slates
Four leading distribution and acquisition executives – Björn Hoffmann, managing director of Pandora Film, Carl Rickmers, director, acquisitions and sales, DCM, Eun-Zi Kim, head of acquisitions and co-productions, X Verleih, and Daniel Guckau, EVP acquisitions and sales at Weltkino – tell Screen the kinds of films that are working well with German audiences, the impact of not being able to sell on the pay-1 window, and the occupational hazard of severe FOMO.
It is now October. What capacity do you have in your slate to buy completed local or international arthouse/indie films?
Björn Hoffmann: Our slate is completely full. We have no room left until the middle of 2027. For us, the next real buying moments are Berlin and Cannes. What we look for does not change much: films by mighty directors and writers with a distinctive voice, people willing to take a risk without losing sight of the audience while they do it.
Carl Rickmers: We have a pretty dense lineup, but obviously if something invigorating comes along, there is always room to integrate it. And we do have a few slots available for next year. It can be any film, but we need to feel there is a clear target audience and that the film is buzzy with real theatrical potential.
Eun-Zi Kim: Our carefully hand-picked slate of six films a year for 2026/2027 is already rather full. Realistically, we are looking at projects for delivery in 2028 or even 2029.
That said, severe FOMO is an occupational pre-condition and/or hazard in this business. I’ve just returned from TIFF with square eyes, and I continue to screen widely. For the right completed film, we would make everything possible.
Daniel Guckau: Our line-up for 2026 is well-filled, and we have a fine mix of German and international arthouse films as well as commercially promising crossover films for the first half of 2027. Our focus when acquiring novel titles is therefore on films that can be released in cinemas in the second half of 2027.
Which films have worked particularly well for you recently at the box office?
Hoffmann: We have had an unusually mighty run of distinctive films this year. Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend has sold 100,000 tickets in Germany, which makes us the film’s most successful territory worldwide. That is the most fascinating result on our slate because, on paper, the film is a strenuous sell, two and a half hours, no obvious hook, narrow international buzz.
Our biggest [overall] success so far this year has been Lars Jessen’s A Stroll To Syracuse, heading towards 400,000 admissions
Rickmers: It’s been up and down for sure. We have had success with Tuner from [German director] Daniel Roher with Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman. The film played well over the summer for us, and it was especially successful with older audiences who wanted to see Dustin Hoffman again but also younger ones in the larger cities. They liked that it was original and had a unique premise. It wasn’t something they had seen in a while, and it was entertaining.
We were the third-biggest territory for the film after the US and UK.
Kim: Our most recent box-office successes were both German productions: the slow Wolfgang Becker’s Berlin Hero and Natja Brunckhorst’s Two To One, with both films capturing a feeling that audiences could recognise and empathise with.
A real surprise for me was Matt Brown’s Freud’s Last Session, where Germany significantly outperformed both the US and the UK.
Guckau: Ingeborg Bachmann was a wonderful surprise this summer. We were not expecting a documentary with experimental elements to attract more than 100,000 cinemagoers during a sweltering summer.
How often do you pre-buy many local and international feature projects?
Hoffmann: Because of the German funding system, we effectively always acquire German productions and co-productions as pre-buys. A distribution commitment is part of how a film gets financed here, so we have to decide long before there is anything to watch
Internationally, it is the opposite. We buy almost exclusively finished films, mostly at the Marché du Film [in Cannes]. On German films, we carry a risk that distributors in other European territories, who can wait and watch, simply do not carry.
Rickmers: We pre-buy probably 75% of our films. It’s still very competitive in Germany, and the more likely the film will be a success, the earlier you have to come onboard. We believe there are always films that work, but it’s become more and more like the needle in a haystack.
Kim: It varies considerably. In 2024 and 2025 we pre-bought one or two films a year. Our 2026 slate, by contrast, consists of six pre-buys – four local and two international – and only one acquisition of a completed film. In 2027, we currently have pre-buys only, three of them international.
And the ancient division between local/German and international is becoming increasingly porous. Even our German projects are mostly in English, all have a sales agent attached, and there is an expectation that they can travel internationally.
Guckau: This year we are releasing a total of 16 films in cinemas, four of which are German films, three of which are documentaries. With the German projects, we get involved at a very early stage on a project-by-project basis, partly due to German funding. As for the international projects, three came to us as pre-buys, whilst we discovered the others at festivals or markets.
Selling the pay-1 window is cited in many countries as a challenge for indie distributors. Is this the same for German distributors?
Hoffmann: Actually, it’s one of our biggest challenges. For years now, the public broadcasters in particular, not all of them, but a good number, have withdrawn almost entirely from licensing international arthouse titles. No slots, no budget, no interest. We all know the refrain. It’s much the same in SVoD.
When the large streaming platforms arrived a few years ago, there was a glimmer of hope because selected successful independent projects were bought for meaningful sums. That has now almost entirely stopped.
Kim: The difficulty is that asking prices from many sales agents still assume we can relatively easily find a pay-1 and/or free TV buyer. That assumption is becoming increasingly challenging to sustain.
Backing is becoming less and less common. You may get an indication from a streamer or TV buyer that they like a project, but there is a large difference between saying ‘we would never buy this’ and saying ‘we might buy this from you later’ – once you have bought it and taken the full risk. The latter is increasingly where the market sits.
Rickmers: But I think it’s still easier than free-TV, which in Germany had always been a large part of the recoupment plan. This makes it again quite strenuous to navigate the field of acquisitions. It’s almost impossible to recoup MGs for $20m+ budgeted films without a substantial free-TV deal. The budgets have to align with the reality of the marketplace.
Guckau: Selling pay-1 windows is certainly possible, but the hurdles and criteria involved are, in some cases, a science in its own right. As film buyers, we not only have to gauge the current tastes of cinemagoers, but must also consider whether the project is American (easier to sell) or European (more challenging to sell); whether it features an A-list cast (marketable) or a brilliant but unknown festival cast (challenging to sell), right through to the question of whether the film is ‘perhaps too political’ (challenging to sell).
