AVACI-FESAAL 2026: Tokyo Brings Together Audiovisual Authors from Around the World
The next Annual Congress of the International Confederation of Audiovisual Authors (AVACI) and the Federation of Latin American Audiovisual Authors Societies (FESAAL) will be held in the city of Tokyo, Japan, on October 19 and 20, 2026. This important gathering will bring together representatives of the audiovisual sector from around the world in a context marked by the transformation of models for the production, distribution and exploitation of works. Today more than ever, the defense of author's rights, fair remuneration, collective management and the impact of artificial intelligence will be among the main challenges facing the international community of audiovisual authors.
2025 AVACI-FESAAL Congress held in Zagreb, Croatia
For Teresa Saldarriaga, a member of the FESAAL Executive Council and president of Directores Audiovisuales Sociedad Colombiana de Gestión (DASC), these kinds of meetings are essential because they make it possible to share experiences and needs among authors from different countries. “The pursuit of author's rights, although everyone may think that it has been resolved, has not,” she points out.
As she explains, there are still countries where the recognition of audiovisual authors’ rights has not been fully established, which is why she considers it necessary to continue strengthening collective organization.
Saldarriaga also highlights the evolution of FESAAL since its creation: “When we started, about eight years ago, with FESAAL, we were only Latin America. And now we have Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific.” In her view, this growth reflects the importance of building an international network capable of sharing knowledge and strategies for the defense of creators’ rights.
Teresa Saldarriaga, president of DASC and ExCo FESAAL member
A Dialogue Between Regions
Holding the Congress in the Asia-Pacific region will make it possible to incorporate the particularities of a region with an audiovisual industry of enormous diversity and global reach into the international exchange.
From South Korea, Hyun Sung Moon, head of the Copyright Committee of Directors Guild of Korea (DGK), considers the meeting an opportunity to share legislative, legal and organizational experiences. “Filmmakers across different continents and traditions face surprisingly common challenges, from fair remuneration to the protection of creative autonomy,” he states.
For Moon, this exchange may be particularly relevant for countries such as South Korea, which are working on introducing or improving statutory remuneration rights. In this regard, he notes that “collective management experiences developed in Latin America and Europe can provide useful precedents and tools for national debates.”
Among the priorities he identifies is the establishment of equitable and unwaivable remuneration for digital and OTT platform exploitation, so that authors can share in the value generated by the circulation of their works. He also points to the need to develop international standards regarding generative artificial intelligence and to strengthen collective bargaining and cooperation agreements between collective management societies and professional organizations.
“By sharing successful legislative strategies and building a cohesive and unified global voice, we can significantly empower individual national guilds in their debates on domestic policies and legal reforms,” he maintains.
Hyun Sung Moon, Head of the Copyright Committee of the Directors Guild of Korea
Collective Management Societies and the Recognition of Rights
The consolidation of collective management societies is, for Saldarriaga, one of the central challenges facing the international audiovisual community. “Countries that do not have collective management societies should organize them,” she proposes. She adds that FESAAL and AVACI can support these processes.
“We are in the audiovisual century. The last century was the century of music, and this is the audiovisual century. So we need to organize audiovisual collective management societies,” she states, adding that “international cooperation allows societies to share tools and knowledge in the face of problems that transcend national borders.”
The international dimension is also central for Moon, who proposes deepening collaboration between collective management societies and professional organizations in order to develop standardized contracts and cross-border reciprocal agreements. The objective, he explains, is to ensure that authors’ rights can be effectively applied even when works circulate outside their countries of origin.
Artificial Intelligence, a Shared Challenge
Artificial intelligence cuts across all three perspectives and emerges as one of the main issues that the international community will have to address in the coming years.
For Saldarriaga, the challenge is related to the use of authors’ works and knowledge to feed artificial intelligence systems. “Everything that feeds artificial intelligence at the audiovisual level and at the level of screenplays and scripts is taken from our work, and that is why they should pay us,” she argues.
Saldarriaga believes that technological development should not be halted, but must take into account the recognition of creators’ rights. “Let artificial intelligence continue to operate, but let our rights be recognized. The path should be through dialogue and negotiation between those who develop these technologies and rights holders,” she states.
From South Korea, Moon agrees on the need to establish common principles related to transparency, the protection of author's rights and the use of works in the training and generation of AI systems. At the same time, he argues that the international community must strengthen dialogue among authors, companies, technology companies, rights organizations and legal experts.
The Perspective of an Author Working with AI
The perspective of Kasamacura, a Japanese film director invited to the Congress and specializing in the use of artificial intelligence within his creative processes, introduces another dimension to the debate. For the filmmaker, the expansion of AI does not eliminate the central role of human creativity. “No matter how much technology advances, I believe that human creativity remains the essence of every work: our culture, our experiences and, above all, the author’s intention regarding what they wish to express and communicate.”
Based on his experience, he considers audiovisual production with AI to still be at a relatively early stage, and believes that frameworks related to author's rights, intellectual property, management and rights protection have not evolved at the same pace as technology. His position seeks to prevent the debate from being reduced to an opposition between regulation and technological development. “The most important question is how we can ensure that technological development and the protection of creators’ rights coexist,” he proposes.
Kasamacura sees AI as a new creative technology capable of expanding the possibilities of expression, but considers it necessary to establish transparent frameworks for the use of existing works and data, respect for authors’ intentions and rights, and the protection of new works created through these tools. In this regard, he identifies several principles he considers fundamental for the future: author's rights, intellectual property protection, consent, transparency, attribution and fair compensation.
Building Agreements Beyond Borders
The three perspectives agree that the transformation of the audiovisual sector requires responses that transcend national legislation and markets.
For Saldarriaga, the growth of AVACI and FESAAL demonstrates that authors from different regions can build a common agenda. For Moon, this cooperation can help strengthen the positions of national organizations in legislative reform and negotiation processes. And for Kasamacura, the exchange among creators from different cultures is essential to understanding how the ways in which works are created and protected are changing in each context.
The Japanese director also warns that laws and regulations alone will not resolve all the challenges, but that it is necessary to maintain an ongoing dialogue among the different actors in the industry, avoiding the notion that the protection of creators and the development of new technologies are conflicting objectives.
The upcoming AVACI and FESAAL Congress in Tokyo thus emerges as a space for sharing experiences that, although they come from different audiovisual contexts, face increasingly similar challenges. In a scenario where works circulate globally and technologies are rapidly transforming the ways in which they are created and exploited, the meeting will seek to strengthen international cooperation and advance the defense of the rights of all audiovisual authors around the world.
2025 AVACI-FESAAL Congress held in Zagreb, Croatia