Meet Irina Ignatiew-Lemke

Irina Ignatiew-Lemke, the newly appointed Managing Director of European Film Promotion, hails from a deep global background of film, television, and telco.  After launching her career in Los Angeles with Lionsgate Films where she worked in international sales, she returned to Europe to join major international production and distribution companies Telepool, Red Arrow International and All3Media Fiction, all in leadership roles. She also served as strategic advisor to Deutsche Telekom and its streaming service Magenta TV. Irina is the founder of Boxworks Media, a Munich-based boutique production and consulting company focused on internationally oriented scripted projects.

The Film Verdict: As the newly minted Managing Director of European Film Promotion, there is no doubt you bring a wealth of knowledge to the role. You have worked with Lionsgate in the United States as well as several European companies.  What are some of the major professional differences you noticed, and do you feel that the cultural differences you observed in the United States can be useful in your work at EFP?

Irina Ignatiew-Lemke: Los Angeles taught me speed and directness. Decisions get made fast, and if something isn’t working, people say so without much ceremony. Europe operates differently, with a more consensus-driven approach and more patience with process, and that patience is often exactly what a co-production needs to actually get financed and made.

What’s useful from the US side isn’t the speed itself, it’s the instinct behind it: knowing what you’re selling and why, in one clear sentence, before you walk into the room. European films often carry real complexity behind them – co-production structures, multiple financing partners, layered rights – but that complexity isn’t visible on screen and doesn’t need to be. Being able to explain that framework clearly, alongside the story itself, is part of what makes a project land well with international partners.

That’s part of what I bring to EFP’s work of promoting European talent and film internationally, something EFP has been doing for almost 30 years now, with our anniversary coming up next year.

TFV: What is the break-in moment for a European film to become a box office success in the United States, and what does it take in your opinion?

Irina Ignatiew-Lemke: Honestly, if I had a formula, I’d be a very wealthy woman. But there is a pattern worth naming: the films that do break through usually trust their own voice completely rather than trying to meet the US audience halfway on genre or structure. Audiences respond to authenticity, not to a film trying to look American. Flow is a perfect recent example, a Latvian, French and Belgian co-production with no dialogue at all. It didn’t alter its storytelling or style to appeal to a US audience, and it still won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and found real theatrical success in North America.

The other piece is patience with the release strategy itself, festival premiere, critical momentum, platform or distributor conviction, sometimes over a year or more before wide traction. Breaking through is rarely a single moment. It’s a sequence of people saying yes at the right moments.

TFV: During the last couple of years Germany has been doing very well internationally, especially during Awards Season in the United States. What do you attribute that to?

Irina Ignatiew-Lemke: A few things are converging at once, and I’d widen the frame a little here, because from where I sit at EFP, Germany’s strength isn’t really a story on its own; it’s one especially visible example of something happening across Europe. There’s a new generation of filmmakers, in Germany and well beyond it, confident enough to tell specific, local stories rather than chasing international formulas. Funders are willing to back riskier creative and formal choices, and strong festival and sales strategies are getting work in front of the right eyes early.

Germany happens to illustrate it vividly this year. Sandra Wollner’s Everytime, winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, is Germany’s official submission for the Academy Awards. Under the Academy’s new rules, ?lker Çatak’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Yellow Letters and Visar Morina’s Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner Shame and Money have also qualified for submission in the International Feature Film category. But the same pattern shows up elsewhere on the continent too. That’s really the story I’d want people to take from this, not one country’s moment, but a European industry that’s finding its confidence at the same time, in several places at once.

TFV: In the words of your bio, you believe the “long-term strength of European film lies in its diversity, its creative ambition, and its ability to connect authentically with audiences worldwide.” How do you define strength in this context? And your guiding principle is “Popcorn with relevance…”  Can you elaborate?

Irina Ignatiew-Lemke: Strength here doesn’t mean scale or box office alone. It means European cinema can hold the range of voices across EFP’s 38-member organisations while benefiting from a shared European network and international presence, without flattening any of those voices into sameness. That diversity is a genuine advantage in a global market that’s increasingly hungry for specificity over formula.

Creative ambition is the willingness to take a real risk on story or form rather than the safe version of an idea. And authentic connection is simple to say and hard to do: audiences can tell the difference between a story that respects them and one that’s calculating what will perform. European film, at its best, chooses the former, and that choice is what builds the kind of audience loyalty that outlasts any single film’s box office weekend.

“Popcorn with relevance” has been my guiding principle for years now. It’s a reminder not to treat entertainment and meaning as opposites. Popcorn is permission to enjoy something, big feeling, great craft, an audience leaning forward. Relevance is what makes it stay with you after the credits. The best European films do both at once, they’re never homework, but they’re never empty either. That’s the balance I’d like more of the industry, myself included, to aim for.

TFV: You will be attending Toronto International Film Festival. What are your goals and objectives at TIFF for EFP?

Irina Ignatiew-Lemke: This year is a particularly interesting one to be there. TIFF is launching TIFF: The Market, its first official content market alongside the festival, a new North American hub for buying and selling. For European sales and production companies, that’s a meaningful new touchpoint on the calendar, another real door into North American buyers and financiers.

EFP will be putting the spotlight on sixteen European titles, including ten world premieres, promoted through our EUROPE! Hub alongside twelve national film institutes and nine world sales companies. Our goal is straightforward: make sure all of them are seen clearly, connected to the right distributors and buyers, and remembered past the festival itself. Last year’s Toronto slate was a good measure of what that follow-through can look like; several of those titles went on to secure real international distribution in the months after.

Beyond that, it’s an early opportunity for me personally to meet the North American side of this industry in the new role, listen, build relationships, and understand how EFP can make the most of this new market as it takes shape.