Iceland-born, U.S.-based producer Sigurjón “Joni” Sighvatsson has the kind of résumé that speaks for itself: David Lynch‘s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Wild at Heart, Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water, plus music videos and series including Twin Peaks and Beverly Hills, 90210.
This week, the Palomar Pictures principal — who co-founded Propaganda Films in 1986 — returns to the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival to receive the Raimondo Rezzonico Award in the Piazza Grande on Thursday evening. The honor is named for the man who served as Locarno’s president from 1981 to 1999.
Ahead of his trip to Switzerland, Sighvatsson spoke with THR about his excitement over returning to Locarno, his read on the festival circuit at large, and why he believes his work doesn’t belong in the “closed system” he says Netflix has built.
Sighvatsson has visited Locarno before and remains a fan, largely thanks to its more adventurous, less predictable curation. “The festival is not just focused on what is in the competition,” he says. “Everything has changed. When Wild at Heart won in Cannes [in 1990], that was a big platform for that kind of unusual film to get. Now, we don’t know really what Cannes is anymore. What are they catering to? What is their vision? It is a very different festival from Locarno.”
Unlike the bigger festivals, he adds, Locarno “never had this incredible focus on just getting stars, or just a competition, or just this.” That flexibility, he argues, will serve it well: “I love Locarno. I think some of the other festivals have become prisoners of their own success, and with the business changing, they have changed. I think festivals like Locarno, which are smaller and have a slightly lower profile and different approaches to film, will do better.”
AI’s Impact On the Industry
With AI a hot topic of debate in Hollywood and beyond, what is the producer’s reading on the technology’s likely impact on the film industry? “I think AI actually will help in many ways, but I don’t really see AI movies changing things because in the end, movies are about people and they’re about stories,” Sighvatsson tells THR. “I see it working for some projects. For the new The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan was not using AI for a reason — because he doesn’t want to make people feel it’s AI. I heard the new [live-action] Moana, the Disney film, feels just like an AI film, even though it’s using real characters [and CGI].”
His bottom line: “I think it’s a double-edged sword, but AI will help. It’s like any very powerful tool, for example, the atom bomb. It’s all about how you use it, or if you use it at all. And I think a lot of filmmakers will opt not to use AI because they don’t need to. But others will use it. Will it change the course of cinema? No. I think it will change television more.”
On Netflix and the “Closed System”
Sighvatsson isn’t optimistic about television’s current state, largely because of streaming — and he draws a sharp line between films and what Netflix produces. “There are things that Netflix calls films. I don’t call them films,” he says. “I call them Netflix films. That’s very different than a film.”
He elaborates: “Most of the things that Netflix does don’t have a very deep meaning, and they are not supposed to. You still need a lot of skill to make those big Netflix films, but they don’t really expect them to have a long life, and they are shown only within a closed system. It’s the Netflix system, so Netflix is just making something for a closed system, whereas everything that I’ve made, even music videos, is for an open system that anybody can access.”
The distinction, he says, comes down to distribution: “The difference is that Netflix doesn’t even sell any of its product to anybody else but Netflix. So they’ve created the language that fits this box that is called the Netflix box, and they’re very successful, including with some of the animation and some of the children’s content. And even though Netflix is changing, it doesn’t change the fact that a Netflix film fits only in a Netflix box. It wouldn’t fit in an Imax theater, for example. … And when you’re producing for such masses, you automatically demand less complexity.”
Given all that, don’t expect a Sighvatsson-produced Netflix title anytime soon. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I don’t think it’s my thing. I don’t think I’m in the Netflix universe.”
Still, he gives the streamer credit where it’s due. “I think it’s great that other people [create content for] it. That’s fantastic, and Netflix has changed the business,” he says. “What I think Netflix has done well is give people in other countries an opportunity to make material in different languages, in different cultures. That, I think, is the greatest contribution Netflix has made.”
