You will receive the Carl Laemmle Producer Award today.

I suppose you always knew who Carl Laemmle is.

I first had to look into his vita one more time.

Michael Hanfeld

responsible editor for features online and "media".

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Yes, I knew who Carl Laemmle was.

If you've studied at the film school in Munich, you can't get past him in film history.

Carl Laemmle was the forefather and founder of Hollywood.

He built Universal Studios and shaped the image of a film producer significantly and lastingly.

What do you associate with him? Carl Laemmle emigrated to the United States in 1884 at the age of seventeen, the son of a Jewish cattle dealer, started out as an errand boy, had a mini-cinema, founded Universal and became one of the most important studio bosses.

What is impressive about him is his conception of what a producer is.

A hundred years ago, he took a look at everything that still counts today: production, sales, distribution, and the evaluation of rights.

He was the first to sign big stars and mess with the patent companies that did not want to grant producers any rights to their works.

But Carl Laemmle wasn't just a formidable producer.

He stood up for many Jewish victims of persecution and gave guarantees so that they could leave Germany for the United States during the Nazi regime.

As a producer, he was way ahead of his time.

Do you draw parallels for yourself from the extensive work of Carl Laemmle - as a producer, as a person?

That would be a bit megalomaniac.

As far as my profession is concerned, the topics that Carl Laemmle took up with us to this day.

He was the first to do popular cinema, he filmed political material, he invented "Dracula".

His vita is unique.

It is all the more astonishing that Carl Laemmle is little known.

He was a producer from Germany, everyone in America knows who he was.

We here have far too little focus on his pioneering work.

It seems to take the price named after him to change that a little.

His hometown Laupheim, however, knows what she has in him.

Laemmle also took care of Laupheim, where the prize is being awarded for the fourth time today.

He has, and the city is very proud of him and takes great care of his legacy.

You will now receive the award at a time when producers are apparently doing better than ever. You and your colleagues, the UFA you manage, can hardly save yourself from orders, also thanks to the massive investments of international players such as Netflix or Amazon.

You can see it that way, and I am also very optimistic when I look at the current upheaval situation. The intensified competition also raises new questions. It's about talent, material, money, global marketing. The market has become more exciting, but also tougher and much more complicated. I take a combative approach. We - UFA, the producers in Germany - compete with the whole world. If we produce series, they have to get through everywhere. The phenomenal success of the South Korean series "Squid Game" on Netflix shows what that means.

The Alliance of German Producers has asked politicians to do something for the local makers. She wants 25 percent of the sales of international streaming services to flow into European productions. Politicians should set such a quota. Would you agree with that?

I am careful about quotations.

But I agree with my colleagues from the producer alliance and Martin Moszkowicz from Constantin Film, who said that the streamers and platforms must be made responsible.

The French show us how to do it.

You set mandatory quotas, which boosts the domestic market.

If you take all the benefits from Germany in global competition - the talent, the film funding - you also have to pay into the local systems and support the infrastructure that the producers have built.