I sat through an industry panel last month where every speaker, without exception, referred to films as “content.” Content strategies. Content pipelines. Content creation. Not once did anyone say “film” or “movie” or even “program.” Just content, content, content, as if a two-year labour of creative love is the same thing as a branded Instagram reel.

This might seem like a petty linguistic complaint, but I think the language matters more than most people realise.

The Content Trap

When you call a film “content,” you’re implicitly saying it’s interchangeable. One piece of content is as good as another. A documentary about Indigenous land rights sits in the same category as a TikTok dance video. A feature film that took three years to develop, finance, produce, and distribute is “content” alongside a listicle or a podcast episode.

That flattening is deliberate, and it serves the interests of platforms, not creators. Streaming services and social media companies benefit from treating all creative work as undifferentiated “content” because it justifies paying less for it. If a film is just content, then it’s worth whatever content is worth on the open market, which isn’t much.

How It Affects Filmmakers

The “content” framing has started seeping into how filmmakers talk about their own work, and that worries me. I’ve heard young filmmakers describe themselves as “content creators” rather than filmmakers. I’ve seen pitch documents that describe feature films as “premium content.” I’ve sat in meetings where the value of a film was discussed entirely in terms of its content library contribution to a platform.

When filmmakers internalise this language, they start making decisions that serve the content economy rather than the craft. They think about algorithms and engagement metrics before they think about story and character. They optimise for platform requirements rather than artistic vision. The result is work that’s technically competent but creatively hollow.

The Platform Perspective

I understand why platforms use this language. They’re running technology businesses, and “content” is the raw material that feeds their distribution infrastructure. From a business perspective, treating creative work as a commodity makes operational sense. You need a certain volume of material to fill a catalogue, and you manage it like any other supply chain.

But filmmakers aren’t a supply chain, and films aren’t widgets. The best Australian films emerge from deeply personal creative processes that don’t fit neatly into content strategies and production pipelines. They’re messy, unpredictable, and often commercially irrational. That’s precisely what makes them worth watching.

The Funding Implication

What concerns me most is when funding bodies start adopting this language. When a government agency designed to support Australian cinema starts talking about “content outcomes” and “content diversity metrics,” something has gone wrong. These agencies exist to support art, not to fill catalogues.

To be fair, most Australian screen agencies are aware of this tension and actively resist the content framing. But the pressure is always there, especially when funding decisions are tied to measurable outcomes. It’s easier to measure content volume than artistic impact.

What’s the Alternative

I’m not suggesting we pretend the media landscape hasn’t changed. Streaming is real, multi-platform distribution is real, and the economics of screen production have shifted permanently. You can acknowledge all of that without surrendering the language of art and craft.

Call films films. Call filmmakers filmmakers. When you’re discussing a feature film, discuss it as a work of art that took years to create, not as a content asset. When you’re talking about the screen industry, talk about the people who make the work, not the content pipeline they’re part of.

This isn’t nostalgia or snobbery. It’s about maintaining a framework in which creative ambition and artistic risk are valued. If everything is content, then nothing is special. And if nothing is special, then why would anyone pour years of their life into making a film when they could just create content instead?

The Film Festival Role

Film festivals are one of the last spaces where films are treated as films, not content. Where the conversation is about artistic vision, craft, and cultural impact rather than engagement metrics and platform performance. That’s one reason festivals matter more than ever.

Every time a festival programs a difficult film, a strange film, a film that defies easy categorisation, it’s pushing back against the content mindset. And every time an audience sits in a dark room and gives a film their full attention for ninety minutes, they’re doing the same thing.

Keep the language. Keep the distinction. Films are not content.