On February 16, EFM 2026 hosted the session titled Future Heritage – Securing the Future of Digital Cinema Archives, during which experts delivered a clear message to the documentary sector: the industry has embraced digital production, but long-term preservation remains dangerously fragile. The panel was part of Doc Salon’s Archive Day.
Moderated by European Producers Club managing director Julie-Jeanne Regnault, the discussion centred on how European policy, production workflows and technology infrastructures must evolve to protect born-digital films. As Regnault noted in her introduction, the goal was simple but urgent: to ensure that films made today “can still be accessed, retrieved and watched decades after decades.” For docmakers, whose films often gain renewed relevance years after release, the stakes are especially high.
First, CEO of Italian archival tech company Mnemonica Piero Costantini framed the problem from a producer’s perspective. Having spent years running production companies, he recalled witnessing a growing pile-up of hard drives and tapes stored in basements with little oversight. In his words, producers were “preserving their money in basements with paper boxes and Post-its,” unaware that digital carriers degrade quickly.
An average hard drive, he noted, lasts about seven years, while LTO tapes may survive 25 years only under controlled conditions. Yet many producers assume digital files will last indefinitely.
Costantini stressed that born-digital films are essentially data, and that producers often lack the IT expertise to manage them. “As long as production companies are not IT companies,” he said, “they don’t know how to treat digital media.”
He argued that preservation must become part of the production pipeline rather than an afterthought, especially for projects receiving public funding. The problem, he added, is not limited to Italy: similar practices exist worldwide. For documentary producers working on modest budgets, the risk is even greater. Without institutional support, valuable works can simply disappear.
Next, the panel saw a video contribution from Simone Appleby, head of the CNC’s Film and Digital Restoration Laboratory. Appleby described France’s approach, where preservation obligations are tied to public funding.
Under a 2016 decree, producers receiving support must provide a digital preservation contract to ensure films remain available for distribution beyond their initial release. Appleby explained that preservation plans are linked to the concept of “continued distribution,” meaning films must remain accessible through theatrical, broadcast or VOD channels.
The CNC also commissioned CST to produce technical guidelines defining best practices. These specify uncompressed, documented formats, metadata requirements and reversibility clauses, ensuring files can be decoded in the future.
Appleby underscored that the goal was not only to safeguard heritage but also to ensure on-going exploitation of works. Without accessible digital assets, she warned, distribution becomes impossible.
Costantini praised the French model as proof that preservation can be integrated into production policy at minimal cost, arguing it should be replicated across Europe.
From the archival side, Thomas C. Christensen of the Danish Film Institute emphasised the long-term perspective. While commercial distribution may focus on five-year horizons, archives aim for 500-year preservation. Denmark’s legal-deposit system requires producers to deliver digital masters before receiving final subsidies. The DFI currently manages around three petabytes of data, growing by roughly 400 terabytes annually.
Christensen acknowledged that digital preservation is expensive, requiring regular migration of storage systems, but insisted the cost is small compared to production budgets. He estimated about €500 per feature per year for storage.
The bigger challenge is convincing funders to allocate resources. “It seems easy to spend hundreds of millions on production but difficult to get one million for preserving those productions,” he insisted.
For documentaries, which may find new audiences years later, the absence of preserved masters can block restoration, re-release or academic access.
Later, Cecilia Pezzini of Coproduction Office highlighted the operational difficulties on the production and sales side. When she joined the company, she found rooms full of unlabelled hard drives whose contents were uncertain.
Producers must track where assets are stored, who created them and how they were encoded. Encrypted DCPs, she noted, can become inaccessible if keys are lost. Coproduction Office maintains internal servers in Paris and Berlin, but lacks the capacity to store all master files. Archives serve as back-ups, but distribution relies on commercial labs.
Pezzini stressed that education is crucial, especially for smaller independent producers who may not realise the importance of structured preservation workflows.
Meanwhile, Costantini argued that cloud solutions can help democratise preservation, allowing smaller producers to manage assets securely. However, he warned that Europe must avoid over-reliance on US-based cloud providers. “We need European technology providers,” he said, describing digital sovereignty as essential to protecting cultural heritage. His call echoed broader EU policy debates about technological independence in media infrastructure.
Panellists agreed that preservation should be seen not as a cost but as an investment. In detail, Costantini pointed out that films can generate new revenue years later, for example when a director wins awards or a topic regains relevance.
Pezzini added that restoration and re-release depend on having high-quality original materials. Without them, costs rise and opportunities disappear. For documentary cinema, whose historical value often increases over time, this argument is particularly compelling.
The session also marked the launch of Mnemonica’s Manifesto (available here), a call for collective action urging institutions to update national legislation to ensure the digital protection of cinema, and producers to see professional preservation not as a cost but as insurance for their works’ long-term value. The document outlines how national and EU frameworks could better safeguard digital masters and related assets, proposing best practices, policy options and avenues for cooperation.
Founded in Rome in 2015, Mnemonica has built a strong reputation with its B2B cloud platform for managing and archiving film content, supporting more than 1,000 productions, including projects for Netflix, Prime Video, HBO, Sky and Paramount+, and serving as the Venice Film Festival’s official platform since 2022.
The Berlinale session concluded with a consensus: Europe must align production workflows, funding rules and technical infrastructure to secure its digital cinema heritage. As Regnault summarised, safeguarding digital archives is not just about nostalgia but about culture, memory and future business. For the whole non-fiction sector the risk of loss is more than technical; it’s a loss of history itself.
