EVERYONE IS WELCOME – INCLUDING THE BOOMERS
We all know the tales of the time-honored campfire stories that were told at dusk and brought the whole community, young and old, together. The need to tell stories has remained, but the nature of the campfire has changed. The proverbial campfire has become radio, cinema, television – all incarnations of a unifying element, a place of gathering, of social interaction.
And today? There are many campfires today. Almost everyone carries their own little campfire with them. The exchange also seems to be fragmented by digital media and takes place via messengers or in comment areas. And while some people don’t know what they’re doing, others have long since stopped understanding the world. You could say that what once brought all generations together is now causing division. But is that really the case? Might there not be ways to find formats and tell stories that bring all generations together again?
This was precisely one of the central themes of this year’s re:publica. That’s why the motto was “Generation XYZ” – whereby, according to the festival organizers, the “boomers” were of course also welcome alongside generations X, Y and Z.
ON SCREEN – FROM THE TV TO TIKTOK
Which (social) platforms are predominantly used by which age group? What content is consumed? Where and how do we communicate? What divides us? And perhaps even more importantly: What connects us? These and other questions were explored in an extensive program. For example, in the panel session “From TV to TikTok”. This was curated by the MediaTech Hub Conference and took place on the second day of the festival as part of the ON SCREEN program special sponsored by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB).
The panel discussion was moderated by journalist and presenter Maria Popov and Felix Briegel, Head of MTH Conference. Together with the panelists Helge Mark, Content Creator, Nina Etspüler, Head of Development and Co-Head of Entertainment at LEONINE Studios, and Sebastian Colley, Author and Creative Producer, they tried to find an answer to the question of how media experiences can be created that connect.
One initial insight from the panel discussion was quite sobering: only a few formats are watched across generations. One of the few formats that actually manages to reach all age groups is the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC).
The fact that the respective generations are addressed by different formats is partly due to the narrative style. According to Nina Etspüler, TikTok, for example, is much faster than “classic TV”. But just as important: who produces the content for the platforms? Helge Mark notes that content on TikTok, for example, may work less well and miss the target group if it is produced by people who are otherwise neither on the platform nor involved with it.
However, it is not only the narrative style, the choice of platform (or plural, platforms) or the people behind a production that can determine the success of content. The content strategy is also important. Which trends are taking place where? And where is what shared? Sebastian Colley highlights “Maxton Hall” as a positive example. The series produced by UFA Fiction for Prime Video, the first season of which was filmed on location in Potsdam, among other places, made good use of the brand of the underlying books and “picked up the community early on”.
In the end, however, all panelists agreed that in addition to all these important points, content is what counts above all. “Content should be the core,” says Helge Mark, because successful content is received above all for this very reason.
FROM THE IDEA TO THE KI-FILM
In addition to the panel discussion, the workshop “From idea to AI film” was also curated by the MTH Conference, which also took place as part of the ON SCREEN program. The aim of the workshop was to create a video together with the workshop participants using generative artificial intelligence. The topic: What does “re:publica 2035” look like? Although this was not directly related to the festival’s motto, interested people from almost all generations came together at the workshop.
At the beginning, the two workshop leaders Matthias Sdun, documentary filmmaker and AI video content creator, and Rainer Blank, trainer for visual content creation, gave an overview of the current status of generative AI models. They also gave the participants helpful tips on what a prompt could look like, how detailed it needs to be written (spoiler: very specific!) and when, for example, it can be helpful not to keep tweaking a prompt and adding new information, but to re-enter the command to create a piece of content. But at the end of the day, AI is still a black box. That’s why, in case of doubt, users only ever have one principle to follow in order to achieve a result: “trial and error”.
MTH CONFERENCE 2025
By curating these two sessions for the ON SCREEN program special, re:publica offered the MTH Conference a good opportunity to present itself. Interested visitors were also able to find out more about the MTH Conference and the other offerings of the MediaTech Hub Potsdam at the ON SCREEN stand.
But what’s the saying? After re:publica 25 is before #MTHCON25, because this year’s MediaTech Hub Conference will once again take place in the heart of Potsdam-Babelsberg, namely on the historic grounds of Studio Babelsberg AG. From September 24 to 25, everything here will once again revolve around media technology innovations in the film and entertainment industry.
Stay tuned: All information about this year’s MTH Conference will be published gradually on the website. Subscribe to the newsletter now to make sure you don’t miss any more news.
Some impressions from re:publica 2025:





