Movies
Stuttgart’s animation festival rolls out the red carpet — and the puppets
MUMBAI: Germany’s biggest animation celebration just hit play. On 6 May, the 32nd edition of the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS) opened to a packed house at Gloria 1 cinema, with directors Heike Mozer and Annegret Richter welcoming audiences alongside cultural top brass and civic cheerleaders.
“I believe the creative industries have a key role to play in shaping the future of our region. This is where new ways of thinking are born, where creatives constantly bring forth fresh ideas — and where new jobs are created. This is especially true for the field of animated media,” said state secretary of culture Arne Braun. “The Stuttgart Animated Week — with the International Festival of Animated Film, the FMX Conference, and the Animation Production Days — is our showcase to the world. And at the same time, a magnet for talent, visionaries, and international decision-makers. Animation, VFX, and games are no longer just about entertainment.”
He underscored animation’s rising influence in shaping both jobs and geopolitics. The Baden-Württemberg region, he noted, has seen its animation and VFX industries treble in number and multiply turnover eightfold since 2010.
The evening capped off the launch of Stuttgart Animated Week, a triple-bill celebration spanning ITFS, Animation Production Days, and the FMX Conference. The result: a one-stop shop where art meets commerce, and craft meets code.
New in 2025: an earlier awards ceremony on 10 May, giving the public a chance to see winning films before heading home.
“With the big awards ceremony moving to Saturday night, we’re creating a fresh dynamic for the festival — which benefits all our guests, as we’re able to screen the winning films the next day. With a colourful family programme, we’re turning the festival Sunday into a dedicated audience day,” said ITFS managing director Heike Mozer.
This year’s AniMovie competition features six global heavyweights, including Memory Hotel by Germany’s Heinrich Sabl — a labour of love 25 years in the making. The €3,000 prize is sponsored by broadcaster SWR.
“The AniMovie competition highlights the rich variety and artistic ambition of today’s animated features. We’re excited to have a German entry in the running, and we are thankful to SWR for recognising the genre — it’s an important and encouraging signal for the industry,” said ITFS artistic director Annegret Richter.
With Switzerland in focus, a robust delegation of Swiss creators arrived with a showcase of films and a free exhibition from the tactile triumph Sauvages. The festival’s broader spotlight on stop motion strikes a nostalgic chord in a world awash with CGI and AI.
“This year, we’re seeing a noticeable increase in stop-motion and puppet animation, both in competitions and across other festival formats. There’s something compelling about this tactile approach to animation — the attention to craftsmanship, the patience it demands. In today’s fast-paced, digital, and AI-driven world, it offers a welcome contrast and a sense of calm,” Richter noted.
Among the early highlights: Richard Reeves’s experimental short Fusion (Canada), drawn directly onto celluloid with no camera involved, and The Wild-Tempered Clavier by Anna Samo (Germany), a toilet-paper canvas commentary on war, plague, and politics.
With 500+ films, hands-on workshops at Schlossplatz, and a new “Professional Afternoon” for insiders, ITFS 2025 is pulling no punches.
Animation’s not just having a moment — it’s building a movement.
Hindi
GUEST COLUMN: Why film libraries & IPs are the new engines of growth
Unlocking value through catalogue strength and IP synergy
MUMBAI:In a media landscape defined by fragmentation, platform proliferation, and ever-evolving audience behavior, the economics of filmmaking are undergoing a fundamental shift. No longer confined to box office performance, a film’s true value is now measured across an extended lifecycle that spans digital platforms, syndication networks, and global markets. As content consumption becomes increasingly non-linear and algorithm-driven, film libraries and intellectual properties (IPs) are emerging as strategic assets, capable of delivering sustained, long-term returns. For Mohan Gopinath, head – bollywood business at Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd., this transformation signals a decisive move from hit-driven models to portfolio-led value creation. In this piece, Gopinath explores how legacy content, when intelligently repurposed and distributed, can unlock recurring revenue streams, why the interplay between catalogue and original IP is critical, and how media companies can build resilient, future-ready entertainment businesses.
For all these years, we thought that a film is successful if it performs well in theatres. There are opening weekend numbers, box office milestones, and distribution footprints that gave a good picture of how the movie has done commercially and also tell us about its cultural impact. However, there are multiple platforms today, always-on content ecosystem, which has caused a shift. Today, the theatrical performance is not the culmination of a film’s journey but merely the beginning of a much longer and more dynamic lifecycle.
Film libraries today are emerging as high-value, constantly evolving assets that deliver sustained returns well beyond initial release cycles. This becomes a point of great advantage for legacy content owners with diverse catalogues, to shape long-term business outcomes.
According to FICCI-EY, the media and entertainment industry of India achieved a valuation of Rs 2.78 trillion in 2025 which is expected to reach Rs 3.3 trillion by 2028 through a compound annual growth rate of approximately 7 per cent and digital media will bring in more than Rs 1 trillion to become the biggest sector which generates about 36 per cent of overall market revenues.
This shift is the expansion of distribution endpoints. We know how satellite television was once the primary secondary window but today, it coexists with YouTube, OTT platforms, Connected TV, and FAST channels. Each of these platforms caters to distinct audience demographics and consumption behaviors, helping content owners to obtain more value from the same asset across multiple formats.
For instance, films that had great reruns, now find continuous engagement across digital platforms. On YouTube, classic Hindi cinema continues to attract significant viewership, reaching audiences across generations and geographies with remarkable consistency. At Shemaroo Entertainment, this is reflected in our film library shaped over decades as part of a long association with Indian entertainment. From classics such as Amar Akbar Anthony to much-loved entertainers like Jab We Met, Welcome, Dhamaal, Phir Hera Pheri, Dhol, Golmaal, and Bhagam Bhag, many of these titles continue finding new audiences while retaining their place in popular memory. Their enduring appeal reflects how culturally resonant stories can continue creating value over time. Similarly, FAST channels have created curated, always-on environments where catalogue content can continue to thrive through star-led and genre-based programming.
This multi-platform approach has very well transformed films into long-tail IP assets which are capable of generating recurring revenue across advertising, subscription, and syndication models.
The evolution of audience behavior is equally important. Nowadays, it’s more important to find what’s more relative than what’s recent as viewers are more influenced by mood, memories, and algorithmic suggestions than by release schedules. Even if a movie was released decades ago, it can trend alongside a newly released movie, if surfaced in the right context. Thoughtful packaging, whether through festival-based playlists, actor-driven collections, or genre clusters, allows catalogue content to remain dynamic and continuously discoverable. Shemaroo Entertainment has built extensive film libraries over decades and its focus has mostly been on recontextualizing content for the consumption of newer environments. This process doesn’t just include digitization and restoration, but also re-packaging of films as per platforms.
Syndication itself has evolved into a key growth driver. In perspective, when looking at the domestic market, curated content packages continue to find strong demand across broadcast and digital platforms. Meanwhile, in the international market, especially in markets like Middle East, North America and Southeast Asia, the appetite for Indian content is opening up new monetization avenues. Here, the ability to package and position catalogue content effectively becomes as important as the content itself.
Importantly, the need to re-package catalogue content does not diminish the role of new content. In fact, originals and fresh IP are essential to sustaining the long-term value of a film library because they act as discovery engines that bring audiences into the ecosystem, while catalogue content drives depth, retention, and repeat engagement.
This interplay between the “new” and the “known” is what defines a robust content strategy today. While new films generate spikes in consumption, catalogue titles offer familiarity and comfort. These are factors that are increasingly valuable in an era of content abundance and decision fatigue. This is also shaping our strategy, drawing value from both a deep catalogue assets and a growing focus on original IPs to strengthen long-term audience engagement and build more predictable revenue streams.
There is growing recognition that long-term value in entertainment will be shaped not only by how intelligently existing content continues to live, travel and find relevance, but also by how consistently new stories are created to renew that ecosystem. In that sense, film libraries and original IP are not parallel bets, but reinforcing engines of growth. For media companies, the opportunity lies in making these two forces work together, because that is increasingly where more resilient and predictable businesses are being shaped.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
