Film Industry Watch recently received the following account from a producer responding to our reporting on how public film funding in Europe is actually decided.

It is one testimony, not a court ruling. But it is also the kind of testimony we keep hearing, from different countries, in different forms, with the same basic architecture underneath: the same names, the same insiders, the same production companies, the same festivals, the same boards, and the same contempt for anyone who asks how the machine actually works.

According to the producer, the experience began in Cannes around nine years ago, after the release of an independent film in New Zealand. That release made them eligible to join a producers program. What followed, they say, was not an introduction to a merit-based cultural system, but to something far more revealing.

“In the daily round table conversations with the industry it soon became clear: indie film uses schemes. That’s what they actually teach you and call it.”

That line is worth pausing on. Publicly, European film funding is sold as cultural stewardship, support for talent, and the protection of artistic diversity. Privately, what many filmmakers encounter is something else: an insider structure dressed up as public service.

The producer says the atmosphere in Cannes was unmistakable.

“What struck me was the fact, everyone knew eachother. Like true buddies sharing a secret.”

That is a familiar description. One of the recurring problems in European film culture is that a closed circle is endlessly rebranded as an “ecosystem.” A network of recurring decision-makers is presented as a community. Structural concentration is reframed as professional trust.

And if you point out that the same people seem to rotate between funding bodies, festivals, production companies, juries, labs, and advisory positions, you are treated not as someone asking an obvious public-interest question, but as someone violating the etiquette of the room.

That is precisely what the producer describes. According to the email, things became tense when they asked why funding seemed to keep going to the same production companies, including companies connected to people sitting on boards and festivals.

“It became weird when I started asking questions about how funding always went to the same production companies that also sit in boards, festivals and are often producers them selves.”

The response, they say, was not transparency. It was deferral. A short, vague answer, followed by a suggestion that the matter be discussed privately at a Dutch Film Fund drinks event later that week.

“A fluffy 30 second answer ended by stating we should talk about this separately on the Dutch FilmFund drinks night.”

That detail says plenty on its own. Public money. Public institutions. Public-interest questions. Private drinks.

According to the producer, when they arrived at the event, they were not on the guest list and were treated like people trying to crash an important industry gathering. The same person who was supposed to explain the details allegedly passed by the entrance, did not acknowledge them, and offered no real answer once inside.

“But if I wanted I could come in and drink a free Heineken dutch beer.”

The image is almost too perfect: not an explanation, not accountability, not openness, just a free beer and a social brush-off. Later, the producer says, when they tried again to start the conversation, the woman in question “rolled her eyes and walked away.”

Then comes the central allegation in the email: that behind the soft language of industry development lies a much narrower production bottleneck.

“It’s like an oldfashion guild: you need to be able to work with one of the 3 production companies before applying for funding. If they don’t go along with it, no funding.”

That is the heart of it. If true, it means the issue is not merely favoritism at the margins. It means access itself is structured through a narrow gate. You are not really applying into an open field. You are being filtered through a small number of approved channels.

The producer goes further:

“The funding can only go through these companies, so they decide what is being produced.”

And then further still:

“The money is simply being shared between these companies and they roll the dice who is to win a price at what event.”

That is the producer’s allegation, and it should be read as such. But it lands because it fits a broader pattern many filmmakers already recognize: when funding, prestige, festival circulation, and institutional reputation all pass through overlapping networks, the claim that outcomes are purely artistic becomes harder and harder to take seriously.

The email also argues that the system’s influence does not stop at production.

“Next to that they fully control what’s playing in the film theaters since they do the funding. Hence we all get to see the same films in the whole of Europe.”

Again, the language is blunt. But the underlying point is hard to dismiss. If the same ecosystem shapes development, production, festival legitimacy, and distribution pathways, then what audiences see is not simply “the best work.” It is often the work that passed through the approved loop.

That has cultural consequences. The public is told it is being offered diversity, while in practice it is often being handed variation within a controlled range. Different countries, similar aesthetics. Different languages, similar ideological packaging. Endless talk of risk-taking from institutions built to minimize actual risk.

The producer’s description of how young talent is absorbed into this structure is particularly bleak.

“If you are talented you might end up at one of these 3 companies as a junior, sucked dry for great ideas and once your puppy trained and know the system you might be eligible to become a producer after 10 – 15 years and share in the revenue. A groom system at best.”

It is ugly language, but it captures a reality many emerging filmmakers describe more politely: semi-permanent apprenticeship, slow permission, endless gatekeeping, and a career ladder that often seems to reward compliance as much as talent. Public funding is meant to widen access. Too often, it appears to formalize dependence.

The producer ultimately decided to step back from the system altogether.

“So, after that experience we were taking 10 steps back from the industry.”

Instead of continuing to chase institutional approval, they say they turned toward direct audience access.

“Luckily YouTube is a great way to play your material we recently found out.”

After ten years behind a paywall, they put their film online. Their conclusion is striking not because it is idealistic, but because it is disillusioned.

“We decided that filmmaking is a passion and will never pay for our mortgage.”

That sentence alone says more about the actual economics of “supported cinema” than most industry panels do in an hour.

The email ends with the line that probably explains why so many institutions fear independent distribution, direct access, and voices that refuse to play along:

“I will never try and get funding anymore. I’m not a beggar that can’t choose. I’m a chooser that refuses to beg.”

There it is. The real insult to the system is not criticism. It is refusal.

Because systems like this do not merely run on money. They run on prestige hunger, dependency, and the belief that legitimacy lives inside the maze. The lab. The market badge. The drinks list. The closed-door panel. The nod from the people who already know each other.

The moment filmmakers stop believing that, the spell starts to weaken.

Not every funded film is corrupt. Not every producer inside the system is compromised. Not every institution operates in exactly the same way. But the pattern is now too familiar, and the testimonies too consistent, to dismiss as bitterness or misunderstanding.

Across Europe, the public is told it is funding artistic openness. Too often, it seems to be funding managed circulation within a narrow class of insiders.

The public pays for pluralism. It keeps getting repetition.

If you have seen similar patterns in film funds, festival programs, training labs, or public funding bodies, contact Film Industry Watch confidentially.

The post Another Producer Describes the Same Closed Loop in European Film Funding“Everyone knew each other. Like true buddies sharing a secret.” first appeared on Film Industry Watch.

By FIW staff

Film Industry Watch recently received an email from an anonymous industry source about Next Step Studio Indonesia, the new initiative tied to La Semaine de la Critique in Cannes. The source did not want to be identified. The reason was blunt:

“I am not writing this to be published as I am scared for my life and my career.”

FIW cannot independently verify the source’s personal fears. But the message captures something many filmmakers describe privately and almost never publicly: a system so small, so networked, and so punitive that even asking basic questions about favoritism can feel dangerous.

On paper, Next Step Studio Indonesia sounds like an admirable initiative. Critics’ Week says the program brings together eight emerging directors, four local and four international, to co-write and co-direct four short films in Indonesia. Those films are then presented in world premiere at Critics’ Week in Cannes as part of a dedicated “Next Step Presents” screening. The directors also pitch their first or second features to buyers, broadcasters, distributors and co-producers. Critics’ Week adds that the films are produced and financed locally, and that the 2026 Indonesia edition is co-produced by Yulia Evina Bhara and Dominique Welinski, funded by local institutions and the Jakarta government, in partnership with the French Embassy and the Institut Français in Indonesia. In other words, this is not a casual workshop. It is a publicly backed access platform with obvious market value.

That is exactly why the selection process matters. And that is exactly where the official material becomes strangely quiet. In the Critics’ Week announcement and the public Next Step materials reviewed by FIW, the institution explains what the program offers, how prestigious it is, and how it can launch careers. What FIW could not locate in those public-facing materials was a clearly stated application route, selection criteria, or recusal policy for this Indonesia edition. The announcement even notes that some of the international filmmakers involved in Next Step Studio come from the wider Next Step workshops orbit, which only deepens the sense of an already circulating pipeline rather than a clearly open field.

That absence would already be a problem. It becomes a much bigger one when one looks at the participants and the professional ties surrounding them.

In the official social-media announcement shared with FIW, Critics’ Week named the four Indonesian directors as Shelby Kho, Khozy Rizal, Reza Rahadian and Reza Fahriansyah, paired respectively with Sein Lyan Tun, Lam Li Shuen, Sam Manacsa and Ananth Subramaniam. The question FIW then asked was simple: how many of these names are already professionally connected to Yulia Evina Bhara, one of the co-producers of the program?

The answer is: enough to make this impossible to dismiss as bad optics alone.

Reza Fahriansyah has a publicly listed project, (Un)Holy, with Yulia Evina Bhara named as one of the producers, and KawanKawan Media listed as the production company. That is not a vague industry adjacency. That is a direct producing relationship.

Sein Lyan Tun also has a direct public project connection. Berlinale Talents lists The Beer Girl in Yangon with Yulia Evina Bhara as producer and Kawankawan Media among the production companies. Again, not rumor. Not gossip. A documented professional tie.

Sam Manacsa has likewise been publicly linked to a project involving Yulia. Variety reported that The Void is Immense in Idle Hours, directed by Sam Manacsa, is a Filipino-Indonesian co-production involving Yulia Evina Bhara.

The Shelby Kho connection is one step removed, but still revealing. Red Sea’s 2024 project materials list Shelby Kho’s Terbakar with Si En Tan as producer. Separately, official market and festival materials for Don’t Cry, Butterfly list Tan Si En and Yulia Evina Bhara together as producers on the same film. So even where the tie is not directly between the selected director and Yulia, it still runs through the same professional cluster.

This is where defenders of the system always reach for the same line: maybe these filmmakers are simply talented. Maybe the producer knows them because good producers work with strong people. Maybe there is nothing improper here.

That is not an answer. It is an evasion.

The issue is not whether these filmmakers have talent. The issue is whether a Cannes-linked, publicly backed, career-accelerating platform should be allowed to operate without clearly disclosed public safeguards while multiple selected participants already have direct professional ties to one of its co-producers. In any serious system, that is exactly when transparency should increase, not disappear.

And the incentives here are not abstract. Critics’ Week itself says these films get a Cannes premiere, professional events, unique visibility, meetings with international buyers and co-producers, and a possible trajectory beyond Cannes through festivals such as Sundance, Toronto and Clermont-Ferrand, with films often acquired by international television channels and platforms. This is not only cultural capital. It is economic capital. It creates future deal flow. It shapes who gets financed, who gets invited into the next lab, who gets introduced to sales agents, and who gets positioned as an “emerging voice” worth betting on.

This is also why FIW keeps returning to the same larger argument. The film industry’s deepest corruption problem is often not a suitcase of cash. It is network conversion: turning public credibility, institutional branding, taxpayer-backed prestige, and festival platforms into private career acceleration for the same recurring circles. The names change a little. The country changes. The language changes. The mechanism remains remarkably familiar.

FIW has documented versions of this pattern before. In Kosovo, we described an ecosystem in which the same people appeared to train, curate, judge and win within a publicly funded circuit. In previous reporting on Dominique Welinski, FIW examined how one person could simultaneously occupy influential roles around talent programs, curation and production. Critics’ Week itself now describes Welinski as the creator and curator of Next Step Studio, while FIW has previously raised questions about how such overlapping positions can distort fair access. This Indonesia edition does not appear from nowhere. It fits a pattern FIW has already been tracking across territories and institutions.

The concentration of influence around repeating names looks even more troubling when viewed in a broader gatekeeping context. Yulia Evina Bhara was a member of the Critics’ Week jury in 2025, and later served on the Busan International Film Festival competition jury. None of that proves wrongdoing in Next Step Studio Indonesia. But it does show how quickly festival power, producer status, jury visibility and career-launch infrastructure can accumulate around the same figures. The issue FIW keeps highlighting is not that successful people exist. It is that the same people keep appearing across selection, endorsement, production, mentoring and market access, while institutions provide too little public information for outsiders to assess where merit ends and network privilege begins.

The anonymous source who wrote to FIW described “blatant nepotism & favouritism” and a system in which many filmmakers are left “huffing and puffing trying to have a ‘shot’ or just get a tiny bit of ‘support’.” Those are allegations, not proven facts. But the documented overlaps are facts. The public funding is a fact. The Cannes exposure is a fact. The market benefits are a fact. The lack of clearly published selection safeguards in the materials FIW reviewed is also a fact. Put together, they are more than enough to justify public scrutiny.

So the answer from Critics’ Week should be simple.

Was there an open call?

If there was no open call, how were candidates identified?

Who made the final selections?

What recusal rules applied?

Were recent collaborators of the co-producers considered, and if so, under what safeguards?

What exactly were the public institutions funding: a transparent talent platform, or a relationship-driven pipeline whose key decisions remain largely invisible?

Until those questions are answered, Next Step Studio Indonesia looks less like a discovery platform than a familiar industry machine: publicly celebrated, softly defended, privately networked, and structured in a way that once again risks converting institutional legitimacy into insider advantage.

The film industry loves the word discovery.

Too often, what it actually means is internal promotion inside a closed loop.

Same logic. Same incentives. Same names.

New country. Same machine.

The post “I Am Scared for My Life and My Career”: Cannes Critics’ Week’s Next Step Studio Indonesia and the Same Closed Loop FIW Has Been Warning About first appeared on Film Industry Watch.