At this year’s Zurich Summit, the industry sidebar of the Zurich Film Festival, festival leaders and industry insiders wrestled with the increasingly complex role film festivals play in a polarized world — from handling political flashpoints on and off the screen to the enduring importance of red carpets and whether standing ovations still matter.

Cameron Bailey, CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival, stressed the centrality of festivals to the global film ecosystem. “If you take the Oscars, 14 of the last 15 best picture winners launched at film festivals,” he said. “Festivals are still where audiences, the media and even the marketplace discover great new films and great new talent.”

But Bailey also acknowledged that politics now shapes the festival space more than ever. Referencing the controversy surrounding Barry Avrich’s Israeli documentary The Road Between Us at TIFF this year, Bailey noted that “we exist in a much more polarized world politically than it was years or decades ago, and we’re a part of that. Current political conflicts will inevitably affect what happens at film festivals because we are participating in the overall climate.”

Tricia Tuttle, director of the Berlin Film Festival, said she has never rejected a film over fear of backlash, but conceded that political flashpoints, particularly films dealing with Gaza or Israel, require careful preparation. “We believe that the Berlinale has always been a place that embraces sometimes difficult conversations, and I hope we never stop doing that,” she said. Still, Tuttle warned that political agendas can sometimes overwhelm cinema itself. “In the last five years, the political and news agenda has taken over all of the airtime around film festivals quite often, and films aren’t cutting through. We have to make sure discoveries of new film voices cut through, and not just the political talking points.”

For Melissa Martinez of WME, the most immediate concern is what happens after a premiere. “It’s very important to have those critics’ reviews, especially right after a festival launch,” she said. “We use that as a tool to sell our films. The more that we have critics praising the film, it gives us more leverage in the marketplace.”

But Helen Hoehne, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and head of the Golden Globes, noted that for many working critics and film journalists, it has become increasingly difficult to secure access to talent at major events. “I always encourage festivals to find ways to get studios and talent to convince them to do more interviews.”

The panelists also weighed in on the symbolic economy of film festivals: the red carpet and the standing ovation. Bailey called the stopwatching of ovations “ridiculous” but admitted it has “value” as part of an industry increasingly obsessed with quantifying success. “It’s part of an overall trend to try to cover an art form like cinema like it was sports,” he said, comparing standing ovation counts to weekend box office tallies.

On the red carpet, Tuttle pointed to Timothée Chalamet’s much-circulated pink vest photo from the Berlinale premiere of A Complete Unknown this year as proof of its enduring power. “That was incredible, solid gold for [the film’s distributor] Searchlight,” she said. Martinez agreed that publicity moments on the carpet remain crucial but noted that some stars avoid them to steer clear of political questions.

Tuttle admitted she has become wary of social media’s role in amplifying such moments. “It is toxic out there,” she said, revealing that she avoided social platforms altogether during the last Berlinale. “I had my best festival in a long time because it was just about focusing on being there in the moment with the filmmakers and with the audience.”

Despite the challenges facing the festival circuit and the film industry in general, Bailey argued that festivals remain central to the business and to the culture at large.

“There’s a kind of pessimism about our young people not watching films anymore [but] they are absolutely watching a lot of films, and they often, apart from Letterboxd, I think the places they discover the most films are at festivals,” he said. “We remain relevant, so long as we remain where our audience is.”