Cinekid Industry Forum 2025 invites the professionals from film and digital media to engage with discussions around the festivals theme 'Time Travel'. On 21 October, 25 invited expert speakers from 10 countries will share their insights on the past and future of the children media industry in a form of a keynote and thematic roundtables. The interactive format welcomes knowledge exchange, inspiration and meaningful connections between the makers, innovators, researchers, educators and the wide range of creatives attending Cinekid for Professionals.
How can the children media industry professionalize and flourish in the current unsettled climate? How can we resist technological hypes, social polarisation and the growing isolation of young audiences? How can we build mutual trust and create stories and spaces where everyone feels seen and welcome? While there are no simple answers to these questions, we dare to look ahead and collectively imagine the future of the children media industry: inclusive, engaging, interactive and sustainable. A future in which makers share authentic stories, and where audiences are equipped with empathy, critical thinking, and digital literacy tools.
By offering different case studies, success stories, and looking behind the scenes of films and immersive media projects showcased at Cinekid, the Industry Forum strengthens connections between the festival’s program and its creators - inviting us all to glimpse the future through their eyes.
Programme schedule
13:30 Doors open
14:00 Industry Forum opening keynote
15:00 Thematic tables: round 1
16:00 Thematic tables: round 2
17:00 Thematic tables round 3
17:45 End of the programme
Opening keynote
Telling New Futures
How media, arts, and culture shape the futures we believe in
Thor Svanholm Gustavfson - Senior Advisor at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, Project Lead at Teach the Future Denmark, and Member of the Steering Committee at the Danish Coalition for Future Generations.
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.
Thematic roundtables
The interactive part of the Industry Forum allows participants to create their own, unique schedules. Every table features three rounds of talks, presenting three different perspectives on each theme. The participants can choose on the day which table they join for each round, no prior registration is required.
The full line up of the Industry Forum will be announced on 23 September.