Programming Profile

Chrystine Girard, head of international distribution at Montreal-based Encore International, talks about changing global demand for Quebec content, her new programmes on C21’s Digital Screenings and Encore’s global expansion plans.

How has your company’s content strategy changed after the events of the past 18 months?
If we look back to how we did business before the pandemic and compare it with now, some 18 months later, the ‘before and after’ hasn’t changed that much; it’s during the pandemic that we had to adjust. We had to find efficient ways to bring our content to the market, to get the buyers’ attention and to ‘feel’ the market – something you cannot do through a computer screen.

During that period, indeed, video conferencing did help, but only up to a point. At the beginning of the pandemic, as nobody knew what lay ahead and for how long, and with productions put to a halt, unsurprisingly, acquisitions increased. After a few months, though, even though we were still pitching virtually, we saw a slowing of the decision-making process.