From original documentaries to immersive innovations, Luxembourg makes a big impact

With six Luxembourg projects on display, this year’s Venice Film Festival was a victory lap for a modest country with an outsize influence. Boasting 1,200 professionals, a vibrant animation sector and 25-30 titles a year, the Grand Duchy’s co-production-driven ecosystem is all the more remarkable for its relative youth and rapid growth.

“Thirty-five years ago, we had no professional infrastructure or real audiovisual production,” says Guy Daleiden, head of the Luxembourg Film Fund. “We had to build everything from scratch, developing an autonomous sector with production companies and technicians who are now highly valued around the world.”

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In the decades since, local daughter Vicky Krieps has given the country its biggest star, and Mr. Hublot directors Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares have brought homegrown projects to the Oscar podium, while pursuing a broader plan to develop the live-action and animation sectors in tandem. Animation now accounts for 40% of local activity, with live-action making up the rest – while non-fiction continues to cause a stir.

Premiering in competition at Venice, Wang Bing’s “Youth (Homecoming)” caps what Daleiden calls a “historic grand-slam” in which the series’ two previous volumes, “Youth (Spring)” and “Youth (Hard Times),” played in competition at Cannes and Locarno respectively. Festival laurels aside, the full 10.5-hour immersion in the Middle Kingdom’s sewing factories also brought local producers into a more global circuit.

“Co-productions with Belgium and France are relatively common,” Daleiden says. “But (the film’s producer) Gilles Chanial went beyond those usual partnerships, traveling further to create unconventional work. (We should follow his example) by diversifying and expanding into new territories.”

In line with these goals, the royal family and the country’s culture minister will take to the Lido with a delegation of almost 30 local producers, all eager to capture the attention that this year’s Venice Production Bridge offers to Luxembourg and French-speaking Belgium. Digital innovation will be a major source of pride – a fact that should come as no surprise, given that Luxembourg productions such as “Ceci Est Mon Cœur” and “Oto’s Planet” make up five projects in this year’s Venice Immersive programme.

The fact that another title selected by Venice Immersive — “Ito Meikyu,” co-produced by Gilles Chanial of Les Films Fauves — has a similar cast to “Youth (Homecoming)” also reflects the broader scope of the transmedia industry.

“We believe that virtual reality, augmented reality and immersive work are a key part of audiovisual production, on a par with film, television, documentary and animation,” Daleiden explains. “All forms of production need to evolve in parallel, so it would be a big mistake to neglect technological developments. That’s why we encourage everyone in our industry to take an active interest in technological developments and digitalization.”

“We can’t stay stuck in the past,” he continues. “We need to change and adapt to be ready for the future. Every company in Luxembourg has been encouraged to engage in virtual reality or immersive work. As our Prime Minister used to say, when the digital train starts moving, we don’t want to be stuck on the platform; we have to be the locomotive.”

With 30 projects per year and a single, comprehensive support fund with an annual budget of $35 million spread across all forms of production, the future development of the local sector is dependent on further investment.

“The trend is very clear,” says Daleiden. “More and more projects are being done, which increases the interest in production and co-production with Luxembourg. We can only use the additional financial resources to continue to diversify and evolve, because we see that the demand is much greater than ever before.”

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