Branding & Distribution: 400 live events across the Nordics?

As part of Nordisk Film & TV Fond (NFTVF)’s 2026 theme year Branding & Distribution, NFTVF look into fresh branding ideas. Swedish, acclaimed writer-director, Ruben Östlund suggests that live Q&As should be arranged with directors to support the releases of their films. What’s more, if they have received public funding, he sees that their involvement should be compulsory.

“If I get money from the Swedish Film Institute, there should be a counter-demand on me that I should tour with my film. Let’s say that if I get money from SFI (the Swedish Film Institute), I have to do a 10 city tour so I can give the cinemas a live event that they can sell to their audience,” Ruben Östlund commented during Slano Film Days this summer. This is an idea he has previously discussed with NFTVF and that he has also written about in Sight & Sound Magazine.

His thesis remains clear: “Live events” are needed to get spectators back into cinemas for local films.

“Say that we are making 40 documentary and fiction films [each year] in Sweden, and all the directors do 10 cities, we are going to have 400 events. We have to build the cinema culture in a longer term. Everybody is hoping we will have one success and that will bring the audience back, but I believe we have to think in a different way - we have to take much more responsibility about how we are releasing films.”

Speak to a range of Nordic funders and marketing experts, and they give a mixed response to the Östlund scheme. It’s all very well for him to suggest such an idea, some suggest. He is a natural-born showman who thrives at press conferences and public events. Not every other director has his ebullience or self-confidence.

““it’s important for filmmakers to meet the audience and, for example, have tests screenings and think about what really touches an audience and why,” agrees Charlotta Denward, Head of Film Funding at the Swedish Film Institute., but she doesn’t fully endorse the Östlund idea. “This may well be the right approach for certain kinds of projects and certain writers and directors, but it certainly isn’t suitable for every project. Different projects and creative voices need different models and conditions to reach audiences,”

“Not every director is interested in or capable of or likes being front stage. I love Ruben Östlund for saying what he says, but he is so good at it,” Pernille Ståhlström, Launch Consultant at the Danish Film Institute, likewise cautions that some filmmakers may not want to hit the road to support a new release.

Nonetheless, she supports the spirit behind Östlund’s suggestions.

“We don’t have any obligations for filmmakers if they should get support from the DFI, but of course we want to stimulate them to go out and meet their audiences,” Ståhlström states. She adds that most directors are very eager to engage with cinemagoers who want to see their films - and so are distributors and exhibitors.

Similar sentiments about “live Q&As” are shared by Ilmari Arnkil, Exhibition and Distribution Specialist at the Finnish Film Foundation. “I think I heard Östlund talking about these ideas at the time of Triangle Of Sadness (2022). I recall that we discussed it in-house, and back then people felt that it gets a bit too prescriptive if everyone is required to do the same amount of Q&As. We also felt it would be technically quite challenging for us to make contracts with the directors, forcing them to don a certain amount of appearances. While the idea definitely has merit, and would increase the engagement between audiences and directors, which is always good, I doubt we could actually pull it off.”

However, like others, Arnkil agrees that Östlund “has a good idea there. If you look at the field of exhibition, it is moving toward these event type screenings, particularly after Covid, special screenings with guests. Exhibitors are looking at ways to increase the value of the cinema experience, and having the director there is a good way.”

Through its Marketing and Distribution support scheme, the Finnish Film Foundation already offers distributors the chance to apply for money to take directors and other talents on tours with their films. “But we don’t tell them what to do. They have to present their plans to us, and we can award them with funding.”

Ståhlström doesn’t have numbers to prove definitively that box office is going up as a result, but all the anecdotal evidence suggests the innovative approach to marketing works, especially with younger audiences. She talks of “thinking out of the box” when it comes to “engaging, maintaining and expanding the audience. We always want to make a perfect match between the film, the audience and the creative people behind it. This can be on different scales. It doesn’t have to be a national broad impact tour. It can be four events in the main cities.”

For Jonas Risvig’s 2024 feature Kontra, the DFI gave funding for “turning cinemas into clubs to attract a younger audience and try to turn the cinema experience into something different”.

With Frelle Petersen’s Home Sweet Home (Hjem kære hjem), a social care medical drama about a single woman working with elderly patients, there was a concerted attempt to reach trade unions working with social care workers so they could see and debate the film at special advance screenings. “It definitely had an impact.”

Meanwhile, before Brohr, an animated comedy directed by directed by Gigis (the name of a directing duo: Adrian Hosseinpour and Malthe Emil Kibsgaard) came out earlier in the autumn, extensive analysis was done on “what is in the younger audience’s mind, what are their worries and what are their hopes for the future”. Everything from the younger generation’s feelings about AI to the state of the housing market was addressed - and a marketing campaign was then tailored which could target these concerns.

The DFI already has its AudienceFocus funding scheme, launched in 2020, which pumps DKK 2 million a year (€269,000 euros) into audience research. This encourages the creative teams behind new films to “investigate what hooks an audience and what turns them off”. This work is normally done in the development phase, so filmmakers can understand what in their film might appeal to an audience even before they get production support.

As all this activity attests, Östlund’s ideas have hit a nerve - even if few endorse his specific idea of compulsory director Q&A tours to boost local audiences. “This is the future if we want to maintain our cinema audiences and develop new ones. It’s about getting the younger generations attracted to the cinema - and that is a challenge for all of us, I guess,” concludes Ståhlström.