This week, students from London Film School MA International Film Business (MAIFB) course arrived in Cannes Film Festival for an immersive industry field trip at one of the world’s most influential film festivals.
The research field trip by the current MAIFB 2026 cohort of trainee film executives got off to a sparkling debut with today’s keynote address by leading technology and future-gazing analyst Sten-Kristian Saluveer.
On a brilliantly sunny Cannes morning, the day before the start of the 79th Film Festival, Sten-Kristian — head of the hugely popular eight-year-old Cannes Next programme — raced through the intellectual gears for his enthusiastic audience. In a witty and discursive hour, exclusively delivered to this 27-strong LFS cohort, he looked at the horizons of AI-for-film; peered down the telescope of virtual production; and gave some heartfelt career advice to those gathered in the Next pavilion by the sea.
Originally conceived as a future-gazing space for the meeting of technology, cinema, and audiences, Cannes Next sits at the cutting edge of the Cannes festival and market experience.
Sten-Kristian challenged the LFS students to re-think their audience and distribution assumptions, in a world where:
- Pay/streamer subscription costs per US household are racing through the $250-300 dollar per month barrier
- You Tube and TikTok were now racing forward in long form global audience capture and monetisation
- Super abundance of content is making audience targeting / distribution the key challenge for the next gen filmmaker
Citing numerous indie film examples (including the LFS’ own directing alumnus Miguel Faus, amongst others), Sten challenged the doom-laden predictions of those who see technology as a problem:
People like David Larkin at Harpoon Media are pointing the way to audience and distribution in this new world. Format lengths are no longer being pre-determined for the filmmaker by the gatekeeper. And access to tech per se is no longer a differentiator. The future is bright,Sten-Kristian Saluveer
After applause for his speech, course leader Victoria Thomas welcomed to the microphone Noura El Khateeb — an MAIFB alumna of the 2020 vintage, who has carved out an impressive career in the Egyptian commercials industry and is now making waves in film too.
It marked a very happy start to a bright Cannes for the current MAIFB students — 27 ambitious students drawn from a dozen countries — as they start out on their professional journey.
We wish them luck.
Find out more about MAIFB at London Film School and the University of Exeter here.
