At the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, IndieWire and The American Pavilion partnered to present the second annual California Day, an event for programming focusing on the Golden State’s long-held status as the premier destination for film and television production in the United States and the world. The event included the panel “Powering Production: Why California Leads,” a conversation between California Film Commission executive director Colleen Bell and Christopher Slager, the President of Film at Fifth Season.
The two sat down for a conversation about filming in the Southern California area, how production concentration has shifted in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to power and encourage more production work in the Los Angeles area.
As Bell explained early on during the conversation, the state of California passed an initiative last July that increased annual funding for the Film and TV tax credit program from $330 million to $750 million. The move, designed to help the state remain competitive with other jurisdictions offering robust tax programs to encourage production, has caused a 400 percent increase in applications.
“So we were doing something right. And, you know, we really went about the process, we went out and we did a listening tour,” Bell said during the panel. “We talked to the filmmakers, independents, the studios, the streamers, everyone. What were we doing in California that was working, and what wasn’t?”
During the conversation, Slager spoke about the upcoming Ang Lee film “Gold Mountain,” which is being filmed in California. The movie, an adaptation of the acclaimed 2020 novel “How Much of These Hills Is Gold” by C. Pam Zhang, is a very uniquely Californian story, focusing on two Chinese immigrant sisters traversing the Californian frontier during the last days of the Gold Rush to bury their father. Slager said that based on the story, it was vital to find a way to make a shoot in the actual state work for the production.
“I mean, we had to shoot it in California. But how?,” Slager said. “It really was the new program. As we were up there, boots on the ground, trying to figure out all the pieces and costs were mounting and challenges were mounting. It’s a true expedition, this production. the new program was released, and as we started looking through that, as an independent studio, taking the cap off of the indies allowed for us to look at it from a whole different perspective. We made the choice to pause production and take the risk to reapply for the new program. I don’t know what we would have done had we not gotten in, but honestly, shooting it in the United States anywhere, with the ambition of the movie, probably would’ve
been impossible. And maybe that would’ve meant the movie wouldn’t have existed. It was as simple as that. We had to preserve the California piece, and if it weren’t for the timing of the new program, it’s probably a movie that would be lost to time.”
Watch the full conversation in the video above.
