I attended the Zurich Summit at the Zurich Film Festival on behalf of Arts3 Foundation and Decentralized Pictures (DCP). A well-curated day bringing together studios, platforms, financiers and creators.
My three takeaways:
1. AI is already inside the creative process
From ETH Zurich's work with Disney to Tilly Norwood one year on, AI was presented not as a promise but as a working tool in production, education and storytelling. The open question is creativity itself: AI can vastly expand what filmmakers can do, yet what it generates remains derived from human-made work. Authorship, not capability, is becoming the real frontier.
2. Streaming and #theatrical are no longer rivals
The clearest evidence: Backrooms, the feature debut of Kane Parsons, who built his audience on YouTube before A24 adapted his web series into a USD 400m+ worldwide theatrical hit on a budget under USD 10m. The Academy (Oscars) made the same point structurally: fandom now travels from YouTube to the cinema and back, and the Oscars move to YouTube from 2029. Michael Barker (Sony Pictures Classics) offered the necessary counterweight: if theatres die, cinema dies. He read this summer, pairing Obsession with Backrooms, as a shift comparable to the Easy Rider moment of the 1970s.
3. Capital and community are being redefined
Conversations with producers confirmed a real Switzerland – Los Angeles axis: While financing and projects may originate here, execution often draws on LA expertise. That is precisely the bridge Arts3 and DCP are building. Traditional players still originate most of the funding, but decentralized tools (community-driven discovery, transparent financing, direct audience engagement) are increasingly seen as fresh/novel oxygen in the industry.
An industry in transformation, driven by AI, platforms and changing audience behaviour, with the cinema experience still at its heart.
