Who owns the world’s biggest film festivals?

Earlier this year, the head of the Berlin Film Festival, Tricia Tuttle, was criticised by Germany’s culture commissioner, Wolfram Weimer, for standing next to filmmakers wearing keffiyehs and brandishing Palestinian flags.“So what?” you might think, “Why would annoying a politician be any concern of a film festival?”. Well, that’s because the festival is controlled by the German government. In fact, it’s owned by the German Government. The company that runs the Berlin Film Festival has exactly one shareholder (the Federal Republic, holding the entire €25,000 of share capital) and its supervisory board is chaired by the federal culture minister.Almost all film festivals sell themselves as temples of artistic independence, but they all have an eventual owner to whom they answer. I was curious who owns these institutions, who appoints their bosses and who pays the bills, so I dug through official records for the 20 biggest festivals in the world Five ways to own a film festivalNine of…