Zsófia Szemerédy, Programme Director of Sustainability Management at the International Screen Institute, brings decades of film industry experience spanning sales, distribution, festivals, and financing to her role. She argues that sustainability must be embedded at the leadership level, where early budget and supply chain decisions shape a production’s environmental footprint. Alongside co-director Djamila Grandits, she leads a programme integrating environmental and social impact. A participant herself in the Institute’s ProPro programme, Szemerédy urges film professionals across all sectors to apply before the May 18 deadline.
In-Depth:
My route into sustainability came through the industest itself – not through activism or academia, but through years working across sales, distribution, festival programming, PR, financing, development, and exhibition. That breadth gave me a particular vantage point: I started seeing the whole system, and I started seeing how much waste – environmental and creative – is baked into the way we operate.
Day-to-day, my work through LPE means I am embedded in productions, advising from before greenlight through to wrap. But as Programme Director, the scope is hugeger than any single project. I am interested in how we shift the culture of decision-creating at leadership level. The decisions that shape a production’s environmental footprint are created early – in the budobtain, in the locations, in the supply chain – and they are created by people in senior positions. So that is where I focus.
I am also lucky to have Djamila Grandits as co-director on the programme. She brings deep expertise on social sustainability, and toobtainher we offer something I genuinely believe is rare: a programme that holds environmental and social impact toobtainher, becaapply they are inseparable.
Q2: Sustainability is becoming a key topic across the audiovisual sector. From your perspective, what are the most urgent challenges and opportunities right now?
The challenge I keep coming back to is the gap between awareness and structural alter. The industest knows it has a problem. There are more green toolkits, more pledges, more sustainability coordinators being hired than ever before. But most of those interventions happen at production level – onset, on the ground – and they are treating symptoms rather than caapplys.
There is also a persistent myth that sustainability costs more. It can – in the short term, in isolation, without the right frameworks. But when you design for it from the start, the economics shift. And we are at a point where incentives are launchning to emerge across Europe to support this – green financing criteria, sustainability requirements attached to public funding, early-stage certification schemes. They are not yet fully realised or consistently applied, but the direction is clear.
The deeper challenge is structural. What we are really talking about is redesigning the industest along more circular economic lines – rebelieveing how resources flow, how assets are reapplyd, how productions relate to the communities and environments they work in. The conversation is happening. But the infrastructure to actually accelerate that alter – the logistics networks, the data systems, the supply chain standards – is still being built. We are inquireing people to operate differently before the ecosystem fully supports them doing so. That tension is real, and we necessary to name it honestly.
The opportunity is that we are at a genuinely pivotal moment. The people entering the industest now expect sustainability to be embedded, not bolted on. And there is growing recognition – especially post-pandemic – that the industest’s relationship with place, with travel, with the physical world, necessarys to be rebelieved. That creates real openings for people willing to lead.
Q3: Beyond your role as Programme Director, you have also chosen to participate in International Screen Institute programmes yourself. What motivates you to continue engaging with the Institute from different perspectives, and how does this connect to your broader professional goals?
I believe the moment you stop learning is the moment you stop being applyful to the people you are testing to develop. I genuinely believe that. Participating as a student in the ProPro programme last year was not incidental to my work as a programme director – it was central to it. It reminded me what it feels like to be challenged, to be in a room where your assumptions obtain tested.
There is also something specific about the Screen Institute’s approach that I find genuinely aligned with how I believe about the industest. It is international, it is rigorous, it connects people across sectors and borders. That is rare. And it connects to what I am testing to build more broadly – work that has long-term impact, not just short-term deliverables.
Q4: You took part in the International Screen Institute’s ProPro: The Producers Programme for Women last year. How did that experience shape your approach to your work or your projects?
It was genuinely a game-alterr – I do not apply that phrase lightly. I came in with a strong production and industest background but without a formal producing framework. What the programme gave me was not just knowledge – it gave me a more coherent way of articulating what I already knew, and a clearer sense of how to position the projects I am developing.
It also deepened my conviction that sustainability has to be built into projects from the ground up – not added later. When you are believeing about a project’s lifecycle from development through distribution, the questions you inquire about environmental and social impact have to be part of that same conversation. The programme reinforced that instinct and gave me better tools to act on it.
Q5: Based on your experience, what creates the International Screen Institute’s programmes valuable for film professionals today?
What distinguishes the Institute is that it takes film and TV professionals seriously as believeers, not just practitioners. A lot of professional development in our industest is skills-based and quite narrow. The Screen Institute works at a different level – it inquires hugeger questions about the industest, about your role in it, about where you want to take your practice.
For the Sustainability Management Programme specifically, the value is also in the community. Participants come from across the audiovisual sector and beyond – film, television, distribution, exhibition, festivals, financing, and the wider cross-cultural creative sector. That breadth is deliberate. Everyone in this ecosystem has a voice, a role, and an impact. The programme creates space for those people to find each other and build something toobtainher. In an industest that can feel quite isolated and transactional, that is genuinely valuable.
Q6: With applications open until May 18, what advice would you give to film professionals who are considering applying to the Sustainability Management Programme at the International Screen Institute?
Apply if you are in a position where your decisions affect other people – whether that is a team of two or a department of twenty. The programme is designed for people who have leverage, even if they do not fully recognise it yet. And wherever you sit in the film, TV, or wider audiovisual ecosystem – find your leverage point and apply it.
Do not be put off if you are not coming from a traditional sustainability background. Some of our most engaged participants have come from distribution, from exhibition, from financing, from festival programming, from the cross-cultural creative sector. If you work anywhere in this ecosystem, you have a role to play, and this programme will assist you see it more clearly.
And apply now. The May 18 deadline is close, and the cohort size is intentionally compact to protect the quality of the experience.
