On a chilly London afternoon, for early June anyway, a special event was held inside Shoreditch House, a Soho House property in the cool East London neighborhood where most of the SXSW events and screenings are being held.
This year, the annual festival held in Austin, Texas, and known for its focus on music, film, and interactive technology, has come to the UK and it’s cool, it’s happening and it’s young! SXSW London has taken over Shoreditch and turned it into a cinematic thing of beauty, I tell you. Even the King himself could not resist a visit!
His Majesty The King visits SXSW London Festival of Technology and Creativity - SXSW London 2025, photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images for SXSW London
And as an event that is both cool and happening, it has partnered up with the Golden Globes for a series of panels and talks hosted by the award body’s president Helen Hoehne.
“Beyond Borders — Creating a Global Presence Amidst a Changing Landscape” is the panel I attended, although there was a chat with Joseph Fiennes preceding it which must have been fascinating. His journeys around the world with his uncle Sir Ranulph Fiennes are the stuff armchair travelers can only dream of.
Participating in the Beyond Borders chat were a duo of producers, Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant of Carnival Films, whose projects include all the Downton Abbey TV and films as well as the Peacock series The Day of the Jackal starring Eddie Redmayne; Turkish producer Onur Güvenatam, founder and executive producer of OGM Pictures; and last but not least, Ukrainian DOP Diana Olifirova who has worked on series We Are Lady Parts and Bridgeton, among much much more.
Hoehne mentioned the fact that both the original 1973 film, starring Edward Fox, and the series of The Day of the Jackal had been nominated for Golden Globes, the only time a cinematic work and its TV offspring had both been nominated.
When asked about the success of Turkish series and why they seem to travel so well, Güvenatam admitted that their stories are always about drama and focus on emotions, but also that Turkey sits at the crossroads “in the middle of eastern and western POVs,” and that audiences these days are hungry for new stories.
Olifirova added that “global audiences are always craving real stories and emotions,” along with, of course, entertainment.
Regarding Downton Abbey, which has not only gone through five seasons on TV, ending in 2015, but also two films, in 2019 and 2022 — with a last installment to come in September of this year titled Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale —its producers explained that they “didn’t anticipate we could sell that show in every territory all over the planet.” And yet, from China to the US, there is always some division, some class system even within families and businesses, which has allowed for the franchise’s meaning to translate to audiences worldwide. “The English country house is Britains’s contribution to culture,” Neame admitted, continuing that “every culture on the world organizes itself in a hierarchical manner.”
As far as the upcoming film is concerned, Neame confirmed that “for fans of Downton Abbey, the September movie is a full and proper conclusion to the stories of all of those characters.”
When asked, Marchant conceded that it’s not a great time for the industry, and a recent piece I read in New York Magazine certainly points to a decline of Hollywood, in Hollywood. It’s an extremely volatile era for TV, Neame said, but also added “I firmly believe that the industry has a great future. Who knows what platforms we will be using in 10 years time but there is always going to be a craving for storytelling.”
The most practical advice for creatives came from Olifirova, who not only pointed to having discovered Andrei Tarkovsky’s “slow cinema” recently, and having fallen in love with it, but also said, about breaking into the business and being told “there are so many people doing this!” Her comment about Tarkovsky reminded me that, even in a world with a shrinking attention span, films are being made that are over three hours long. So, great cinema can still reign supreme over our ADD minds.
“You’re not a crowd,” the Ukrainian cinematographer continued, “you’re just one person, connect to people, go to film festivals,” be inventive, she added, and gave the example of working through Zoom online during the pandemic. “Stick to it and continue and be ambitious,” she added and conceded that personally, she needs “to heal people and change them,” or at least feel like she does, through her work.
Her fresh, cool prospective was really invigorating for me. It renewed my love for what I do. And yes, I am just ONE person, so don’t tell me I can’t do it. If I had a dollar for every time someone said “you can’t do that, too many are doing it already…” I’d have at least $100 today.
Touching on the advent of AI and the use of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to stream series, the panel was unified in saying that one should not be afraid of new technologies. “It’s better to learn it than avoid it,” Olifirova said about AI, adding that she’s using it herself as a help tool more and more. “We’re never going to be scared of a good idea,” Marchant said regarding looking to the internet for inspiration, while Güvenatam gave the example of some already existing “90 seconds 50 episodes series” format which might prove successful as a way to reach attention-challenged audiences in the future.
Once again from New York Magazine, there are soap operas, “microdramas” being made on ReelShort with episodes which last 60 seconds and end of a cliffhanger, so Güvenatam was absolutely on point!
Having recently mentored a young Algerian filmmaker,
Zoulikha Tahar who created the award winning series El’Sardines which runs 6 episodes, each lasting from nine to thirteen minutes and packed with storytelling, I can confirm that the future is here — and it’s full of long, short, good, great narratives, which promise to entertain us for years to come.