Netflix CEO Invests in Italy’s Talent
TORONTO – With Netflix Italy reaching its 10th anniversary last week, the streamer’s CEO Ted Sarandos was in Rome to mark the occasion. The celebration was paired with the announcement of a new partnership with Italy’s National Film School – Il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC). The CSC will now manage the historic Cinema Europa Theatre in Rome, slated to reopen in 2026. With the financial assist from Netflix, Cinema Europa is currently undergoing refurbishment since being closed during the pandemic.
The plan? To cultivate a creative community for Italy’s emerging filmmakers, who will presumably sell all their stories to Netflix one day. The implicit expectation is surely to establish a direct line from Western Europe’s oldest film school to Netflix’s headquarters. The CEO’s investment and presence in Italy bodes well for the country’s film community, indicating a burgeoning marketplace for the artform, which until recently had been on a creative and economic downturn since the turn of the century.
And while the streamer’s brand isn’t typically synonymous with quality programming, Netflix Italy can legitimately boast its successes on at least two fronts. One, 50 Italian titles have reached Netflix’s global top 10, ranking Italy’s streaming content 10th among the world’s most popular. Two, since Netflix Italy’s launch in 2015, the company has invested over €1.1B in Italy, created 30 production partners and supported around 6000 local jobs in the audiovisual sector.
“Italian titles are making themselves an interest for global members,” says Netflix’s VP of Original Content for Italy, Eleonora Andreatta. “An important part of that is we have not changed our minds. We are really investing in the Italian industry. In ten years, we have distributed 1,000 Italian films and series, and shot in 100 cities in Italy. It’s important to have this variety”.
Andreatta made the move from Rai to Netflix for the “chance to give talent the opportunity to create with freedom”. Having been the former Head of Drama for RAI, she was lured by Netflix’s risk averse model of minimal interference with maximum budget. “Sometimes you take a risk to follow the ideas of strong talent, and I feel it is this risk that makes films and series relevant for the Italian audience”.
Andreatta emphasized that one of the paths to their success has been to break decade long industry “taboos”, citing their film dubbing practice. Prior to 2017’s Suburra: Blood on Rome (an Italian crime Drama series), Italian language series and films were rarely dubbed into English. Netflix Italy has changed this. According to Netflix, the streaming audience outside of Italy is apparently embracing an outdated practice – historically perfected by Italians.
If this is true, that Netflix is attempting to change the audience’s viewing habits over time, then Netflix’s success in this area might be considered a double-edged sword for film purists. Making dubbed content more accessible might well broaden the marketplace for high quality filmmaking, but the horror of watching lips move out of synch with an audio track remains unbearable – for the people making the films, at least.
Images courtesy of Virginia Bettoja and Netflix
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
