Locarno Pro’s industry strand puts spotlight on AI, consolidation pressures, and “creative freedom”

The Locarno Film Festival’s industry program, Locarno Pro, is returning to its role as a meeting point for film buyers, financiers, and filmmakers with a 2026 focus on what festival leadership calls urgent industry questions around “power, people, data,” including artificial intelligence and the growing influence of algorithmic decision-making.

Markus Duffner, the festival’s industry strand director for Locarno Pro, said the programming is meant to reflect the current moment for the international screen sector, where emerging technologies are changing how projects are discovered, assessed, and financed, and where corporate consolidation is altering the leverage held by creators and smaller producers. In Duffner’s framing, those shifts raise a core tension for the industry, balancing efficiency and scale against the preservation of creative freedom.

Duffner said the industry track also is designed to keep the conversation grounded in practical realities for working professionals. That includes how “algorithms and consolidation” affect not just creative choices but also access to opportunities and the ability for producers to reach partners. The aim, according to the Locarno Pro preview, is to prompt discussion among industry participants rather than treat AI as a purely technical topic.

The preview also points to the return of the Locarno Investment Community, an industry component intended to bring together investment and financing actors connected to independent and developing projects. Duffner’s comments tie the comeback of the investment forum to a broader need, organizers say, for structured spaces where producers can meet decision-makers and for clearer pathways from development to financing.

In addition to the technology and market themes, Locarno Pro’s agenda includes a spotlight on Uruguay. The festival program preview indicates that the country will receive enhanced attention within the industry strand, an element Duffner characterized as part of Locarno’s effort to broaden the international lens and surface projects and creative voices beyond the festival’s traditional core markets.

The Locarno Pro preview positions the 2026 edition as a forum where industry stakeholders can discuss the impact of consolidation and data-driven systems on commissioning, distribution, and financing, with a particular emphasis on how those forces play out for individuals and smaller teams. Duffner’s remarks describe the industry’s current challenges as both structural and immediate, pointing to a need for organized, repeated dialogue in the middle of a fast-moving media environment.

As Locarno Pro develops in parallel with the main festival schedule, industry attendees will use the platform to connect around those topics through meetings and sessions tied to the investment community and the festival’s Uruguay spotlight. The announced themes suggest the discussions will focus on decision-making systems and market power, with the practical goal of clarifying what producers can do in a landscape where project visibility and evaluation increasingly depend on data and automated processes.