Industry Forum

Cinekid Industry Forum invites the professionals from film and digital media to engage with discussions around the festival's theme, Time Travel. On October 21, starting from 14:00, the programme will feature an opening keynote and 10 thematic roundtables on critical industry topics, led by multiple field experts.

Opening keynote: Telling New Futures
Children grow up surrounded by stories about the future. But what kind of futures are they being offered? Across news, social media, and popular culture, we tend to see the same recurring narratives - centered around technological breakthroughs, crisis or climate collapse. What’s often missing are futures that invite nuance, care, and co-creation. In this keynote, Thor Svanholm Gustavfson makes the case for strengthening what UNESCO calls Futures literacy - the ability to imagine and use the future - in different ways - to prepare, adapt and innovate in a world marked by uncertainty and constant change. In times of high uncertainty and declining collective imagination, this becomes more than a skill. It becomes a necessity. Futures literacy helps us uncover the hidden assumptions behind the futures we carry with us and opens a space for children to become not just recipients of inherited narratives of the future - but active shapers of new ones.

Create your own programme: thematic roundtables
Interactive table talks allow the Industry Forum participants to get inspired, exchange knowledge and get to know the latest trends in children's media and beyond. Programmed around 10 overarching themes, the conference line up will include 30 presentations and 20 international speakers: researchers, audiovisual creators, broadcasters, distributors, festival programmers and many more. The participants of the Industry Forum can shape their personal schedules according to their interests and needs, choosing 3 sessions, 45 minutes each. The detailed programme of the Industry Forum will be announced by the end of September 2025.

All industry professionals in children’s film and media who want to get up to speed with the latest trends, developments, opportunities, and challenges in the industry.