Glen Basner and Edward Berger at the 2026 Zurich Summit. The Hollywood Reporter Quite the bromance unfolded on stage at the Zurich Film Festival Summit as Oscar-winning filmmaker Edward Berger held a session with FilmNation Entertainment founder and CEO Glen Basner, who is this year’s Game Changer award recipient.
Basner, being honored for what the festival described as his “outstanding achievements, excellent cinematic taste, and significant contributions within the film industry,” has helped make FilmNation one of the dominant players in the independent film business, backing awards-season and commercial hits including Anora, Promising Young Woman, Arrival, The Big Sick, and, crucially, Berger’s Academy Award-nominated Conclave.
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“Glen, I’m so proud to have had the opportunity to make a film with you. I’m so happy to know you. I’m so happy to call you a friend, and I want to congratulate you on your wonderful career, for all the great movies, for all the filmmakers that you’ve inspired, that you’ve instilled confidence in,” said Berger after an hour-long discussion in which the two reflected on their time together, a chaotic film climate, and why great storytelling will always be at the heart of Basner’s work.
At this year’s Zurich Film Festival, Basner is producing three movies in the lineup: Florian Zeller’s Bunker with Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, A Talent for Murder with Helen Mirren and I Play Rocky, which proved a real crowd-pleaser at TIFF.
Mostly, however, the two creative partners — both of whom worked at indie production and sales company Good Machine early on in their respective careers — focused on the making and success of Conclave. Berger’s 2024 masterpiece starred Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals, who is tasked with overseeing the election of a new pope at a time when he is personally experiencing a crisis of faith.
Berger shared an anecdote about feeling “in a real panic” when the film had sold in most territories apart from the U.S. in Cannes a few years back. He then recalled, after nearly finishing the film, that he desperately wanted it to go to the Venice Film Festival. “Or at least show them the movie and see if they’d show it,” said the Swiss-Austrian. “This was in May and Glen, we got on the phone — and I hated Glen — he said, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure the movie’s ready. Don’t rush it.’ And then: ‘Is it going to be expensive? We don’t have American distribution in place yet.'”
But Berger really wanted to hit the Lido with Conclave (the film would later earn its world premiere in Telluride). “Glen said, ‘Okay, let’s test the movie. Let’s show it to a few people, to friends and family, and see how it does. And if it does really well, let’s just finish it.’ And Tessa [Ross, of House Productions] was of the same opinion, by the way. Tessa also said, ‘I think you’re still missing something, and I don’t know what it is.’ And no one could really formulate it,” Berger explained.
They tested the movie, and it “tested just okay,” he continued. “It was an argument to say, ‘Okay, why don’t we just sit on it and wait a little bit?’ And those really are professorial decisions and creative decisions that made me, that pushed me. And this is going back to Good Machine. This is what I really took from Good Machine: You can always do better,” Berger told Basner. “We make mistakes as filmmakers. We make mistakes as producers, as financiers, [in] sales. We oversell it. We undersell it. Movies fail. […] So I really learned: ‘Let’s look at it again.’ Maybe it can be better. Maybe we can do better. Whether it’s a budget, whether it’s a contract, or whether it’s a cut of the movie.”
“[I had] absolute gratitude to you,” Berger continued. “You were right, I was wrong.” Basner quipped back: “The film was finished… We technically could have been ready for Venice that year.”
Basner said his decision-making dates back to their time at Good Machine. “We always talk about how we want to work on films that inspire us and that we think we understand. And if the marketplace doesn’t get it yet, that’s okay. We’re going to move forward, and we’re going to let them understand why this film is so exciting at a later time. But after that, we’re then going to work like hell to create the environment where that filmmaker can really go and achieve their vision in the purest sense.” He continued about Conclave, demonstrating an impressive knack for knowing when to give directors the appropriate space: “We don’t know if we knew how to unlock it, [otherwise] we would have suggested it. We didn’t know that it was definitely going to be unlocked the way that you ended up doing so, but we knew that we just needed to give you a little bit of time and space to work through and get it to the great place that it did.”
They even had a “few hundred thousand dollars” left over, per a self-proclaimed “frugal” Berger. Basner insisted that the money be spent on improving the film. “It was really inspiring to get that call from you and have the opportunity to make the movie better again, just for being better,” Berger said.
The men touched on why Focus Features became the right home for Conclave in the U.S., with Berger explaining that he was terribly nervous about theatrical distribution there and what that path would look like. “I was so close to the film for so long,” he said. “You were championing Focus […] you were confident that they would be the right partner. And I really kept thinking, ‘Well, what about the streamers? Maybe it’s safer there,'” said Berger. “What gave you the confidence? Again, I’m super grateful for that as well.”
Basner simply told him that “the first thing you learn over time [is] we’re never really exposed the same way that a director is exposed when the movie goes out there. If we make a film that doesn’t succeed, the press aren’t writing about, ‘It’s another shitty film from FilmNation!’ They’re talking about the filmmaker and the actors, and with that understanding comes real responsibility and humility, where these are important decisions in terms of the success and what happens for that filmmaker going forward.”
“But there are sme films that when you watch it,” said Basner, “they’re just undeniable. And Conclave is a fucking amazing movie. We knew it, and we believed and Focus believed that it would have the greatest impact.”
Conclave proved an audience hit as well as an award darling, generating over $125 million at the global box office on a $20 million budget. Its popularity furthered when the real-life Pope Francis died in 2025.
Aside from Conclave, Berger and Basner reflected on the evolution of FilmNation over the last 20 years. They discussed what’s stayed consistent as the company has continued to expand globally, what helps him bolster buyer confidence in a risk-averse industry — and why a film’s budget never equates to its value.
Basner lauded the films he’s in Zurich with, including the “nostalgic” I Play Rocky, which he believes will inspire audiences heading to the theater, and the upcoming FilmNation slate. “This year we will make four films and a television series, and we already have four films in pre-production and hope to make another three. So right now it’s about maintaining the same high-quality standards, but it’s really about more, and with that, being very much okay with taking more risk than maybe we would have some years ago,” beamed Basner.
Earlier at the Zurich Summit, Backrooms director Kane Parsons reflected on helping to save the summer box office, while AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer doubled down on that big YouTube move.
The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.
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