Locarno Pro Panel: Power, People, Data Order Debated

LOCARNO, Switzerland - The question was disarmingly simple: Power. People. Data. But in which order? Over the course of a lively panel discussion at Locarno Pro, the industry’s annual gathering of producers, financiers, and distribution executives, the answer proved anything but simple.

Moderated as part of the festival’s professional summit, the conversation drew a full room of attendees expecting a tidy hierarchy. Instead, they got a spirited debate that revealed deep fissures across the film world about who actually controls the modern marketplace - and what that means for the stories that get made. The panel, which ran nearly ninety minutes, featured a mix of European producers, a U.S.-based streaming strategist, and a documentary filmmaker with a background in tech ethics. They ranged from near-total faith in algorithmic decision-making to a stark warning that data-driven production risked strangling the very creativity that draws audiences in the first place.

The opening salvo came from the streaming strategist, who argued that audience data has become the most reliable compass for greenlighting projects. In his view, the order is clear: data first, people second, power a distant third. He cited anonymized viewership patterns that now rival traditional test screenings, insisting that a well-fed algorithm rarely lies about whether a premise will land. “We used to guess what people wanted,” he told the room. “Now we know. The question is whether we have the courage to act on that knowledge.” His position drew nodding approval from several younger attendees, many of whom have built careers on the promise of predictive analytics.

But the documentary filmmaker pushed back sharply, arguing that the panel’s framing was itself a trap. She contended that people - both the on-screen subjects and the off-screen audience - must come first, with data serving merely as a tool to serve them better. Her central complaint was that many platforms now treat viewer behavior as a proxy for human desire, flattening complex cultural tastes into binary metrics. “Data didn’t discover The Traitors,” she said. “A human being did. And a human being fought to get it made. Data just helped them optimize the trailer.” The line landed with laughter and applause, but the strategist was quick to respond, noting that the documentary boom of the last decade would never have reached its current scale without the algorithmic distribution that platforms perfected.

Things grew more contentious when the conversation turned to power. One European producer, known for financing art-house titles across multiple countries, argued that the real order is inverted in practice: power first, people second, data a convenient afterthought. He framed the debate as a cover for a more uncomfortable reality - that consolidation among a handful of global players has made genuine decision-making less democratic than ever. “We talk about data as if it’s neutral,” he said. “But who owns the data? Who decides which data matters? That’s the power question, and it doesn’t get solved by dashboards.” His comments sparked a heated back-and-forth about the role of publicly funded film institutions versus private equity, with several panelists trading anecdotes about projects that had been rescued - or killed - by a single executive’s spreadsheet.

The moderator, a veteran festival programmer, steered the discussion toward a middle path: that order might be less important than alignment. She proposed that power, people, and data function best as a tripod, with failure occurring when any one leg grows too long. Several panelists warmed to that framing, though the documentary filmmaker remained skeptical, noting that the tripod metaphor assumes a stability that the current market simply doesn’t offer. “It’s a tent in a storm,” she said. “Everything is shifting. The best we can do is keep the people at the center while we figure out the rest.” The strategist conceded the point but offered a caveat: keeping people at the center, he argued, often means admitting that popular taste isn’t always sophisticated - and that there’s nothing shameful in that.

By the time the panel wrapped, no consensus had emerged, and the audience seemed to appreciate the lack of resolution. Attendees lingered in the aisles, continuing the debate in smaller clusters. One young producer from a Nordic film commission told a colleague that the session had convinced her to delay signing a co-production deal until she better understood where her financing partner’s data actually originated. Another, a sales agent from London, said she was relieved to hear executives admit that algorithms still miss emotional nuance. “Everyone talks about data like it’s a crystal ball,” she said. “Today was a reminder that it’s really just a mirror. And mirrors only show you what’s already in front of you.”

The Locarno Pro program continues through the week, with further panels planned on theatrical windows, AI-assisted screenwriting, and the evolving role of public broadcasters. If this session is any indication, those conversations will be anything but tidy. For now, the film industry’s answer to the panel’s central question remains unresolved - and perhaps that’s exactly the point. In a moment when power consolidates, people fragment, and data multiplies, the order we choose may matter less than the honesty with which we debate it.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter