After 12 years leading the Calgary International Film Festival through both trials and tribulations, Steve Schroeder has said he’s stepping down as the executive director.

Schroeder said that with a strong team in place, and the festival in a solid financial position, now was the right time for him to step back from the role—although not entirely from CIFF.

His last day as executive director will be Dec. 15, with Katherine Penhale, CIFF’s Operations Director and Chief of Staff, taking over as acting executive director. Schroeder will be continuing on after some well-earned time off as a special advisor to the festival.

“Film festivals, in general, are not always easy organizations to run, there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s been such a time of change in the film industry. The arts and cultural industry over the last decade-plus has been full of challenges, which I really enjoy. I love big challenges,” said Schroeder.

“Right now though, the time commitment required for the festival is not aligned to the time I really want to make for family right now. It’s more of a priority thing in terms of taking a break from being focused on work, focused on my career, focused on running an organization to being there for my family and being able to enjoy time with people.”

He said that part of what any executive director has to do is create an organization that will survive their departure, and that right now he felt that after spending the last few years building a very strong team at CIFF and a multi-year strategic plan, that the organization is in a great place for the future.

“I’m very invested in the organization and in the festival, and I wouldn’t and couldn’t leave it in a place where I thought it would not be stable without me. I can say with confidence that our organization has a great plan. It’s got great people who are very experienced, and veterans of the festival who understand the plan are excited by it, and know how to move it forward,” Schroeder said.

“From a team perspective, from a financial perspective, from a reputation perspective in terms of how we’re viewed by the industry and by filmmakers, and the quality of our programming, I feel very confident that we’ve built an organization that’s going to really flourish after my time.”

Amish Morjaria, President of CIFF’s Board of Directors, praised Schroeder’s work and thanked him for his dedication to the festival.

“Steve has been an instrumental member and leader of the CIFF team for over a decade and his body of work during this time has allowed us to launch into our next phase, which we look forward to unveiling soon. His ability to connect the vision and goals of the organization have been paramount to our success and the strong position we are currently in.”

CIFF is planning on releasing its 2024-26 Vision and Design and post-Eau Claire Cinemas strategy in the spring of 2024.

Growing a festival

Schroeder’s tenure at CIFF took the organization from a nearly unviable financial state in the late 2000s and early 2010s, through a near doubling in the number of submissions and interest from international filmmakers and studios, to becoming an Oscar-qualifying film festival, to ushering the festival financially stable through the global pandemic.

“I was reflecting on this the other day, and something that I brought into the mix because I didn’t come from the film industry into this role—I was a theatre producer and I worked for the [One Yellow Rabbit] High Performance Rodeo, where boundaries between disciplines was not really that important—what was important is how exciting and engaging it is, and so I brought that same ethos to my role at CIFF,” he said.

Prior to taking on the executive director role at CIFF, Schroeder served as the executive director for One Yellow Rabbit for nearly 12 years and was honoured with Calgary Magazine’s Top 40 under 40 award in 2021, and then first-ever Rosza Award for Excellence in Arts Management in 2006.

He said that he hoped that his legacy from his time leading CIFF would be the experimental side of the festival, engaging with audiences in new and exciting ways to deepen their appreciation of film, while expanding the number of offerings of experiences.

Among those experiments were partnerships with Beakerhead on The Ascent, a marionette that climbed the Devon Tower, to Chad van Galen doing scores live to classic black and white films, and the addition of video games and VR multimedia experiences.

“Those sorts of creative partnerships with other arts organizations, those have been very important, and we’ve only dipped our toe in the water of that compared to where we want to go with it,” Schroeder said.

Building a community around the silver screen

Writing in Fast Forward in 2010, journalist Trevor Scott Howell outlined how CIFF had been forced to lay off all but one of their staff after they had been dealt a devastating financial blow by the insolvency of the ticketing company RepeatSeat.

He quoted CIFF’s then Executive Director Jacqueline Dupuis, saying that the festival had not been able to recover after a very hard two years.

Schroeder took over the role in 2012, a year that saw the attendance at the festival rise after strong buzz for a series of films, including that of a rare Quebec-made sci-fi film from Martin Villeneuve, the brother of Dennis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario, Dune).

Speaking to Erik Volmers with the Calgary Herald after the completion of that year’s festival, Schroeder said, “I don’t think the future of CIFF lies in chasing celebrities, I think the future of CIFF lies in engaging people with ideas and things they care about, whether it’s pure entertainment or an issue like the environment.”

Reflecting on that first festival, Schroeder said that CIFF had followed that vision—although he’s never said no to an A-lister walking the red carpet.

“When I came into CIFF, the festival was in rough shape on a number of levels. It had a lot of potential, and it had done some great things, but it was also a little bit siloed compared to the rest of the arts and cultural community in the city,” he said.

“I believe that CIFF is really seen as an integral part of the of the local arts community now. As far as the celebrity thing goes, I mean, I’m not personally speaking just purely for myself—I’ve never been a very celebrity-focused person—I think the quality of the art itself is the most important thing. Frankly, when we’ve asked our audience, that’s what they told us they want to see.”

He said that CIFF has always been judged by its audience, receiving feedback in the form of formal surveys and also in what people are willing to see.

That high praise has translated into industry acceptance as well. Festival submissions rose from between 1,800 to 1,900 to just shy of 4,200 for 2023.

“It’s also important for a film festival to be a gathering place for its local industry,” Schroeder said.

“There’s nothing quite as fun or as impactful as an event where the local filmmakers and the visiting filmmakers mix it up at a film festival, and get to know each other and socialize and become friends.”