Estonian film startup secures funding to develop a unique casting platform

IRIS Casting Ecosystem, a startup in the Tehnopol Film and Multimedia Accelerator, has received nearly €150,000 in funding from Enterprise Estonia to further develop its automated casting workflow platform. The company is building a digital ecosystem that brings directors, producers, casting directors, actors and agents together on a single platform, streamlining the entire casting process.

According to IRIS Casting Ecosystem founder Ronja Kissa, the idea for the platform grew directly out of her own professional experience. “I have been working in casting for nearly 20 years. In the past, auditions mainly took place in studios, with direct communication between actors and casting directors. The pandemic, however, rapidly moved much of the process online. While this made the work more flexible, it also made it significantly more fragmented,” Kissa explained.

Actors now record their auditions independently, either at home or in a studio. Throughout the casting process, briefs, video files, comments, availability information and feedback are shared across multiple channels, from email and WhatsApp to file-sharing links and Excel spreadsheets.

Kissa says the film industry currently lacks a convenient, standardised all-in-one tool that meets the needs of everyone involved. IRIS aims to save teams significant time and make the process easier to manage, reducing the amount of time spent on administrative tasks. “This allows teams to focus on the creative work and the tasks that truly require human judgement, attention and intuition,” she added.

“Across my two casting companies, we calculated that last year alone nearly 200 working days were spent purely on administrative tasks before the creative work could even begin. IRIS aims to eliminate this fragmentation by bringing the entire casting workflow – communication, file sharing, availability, selections and feedback – onto one convenient and secure platform,” Kissa explained.

The Estonian film startup’s solution also helps address data protection and GDPR requirements, while giving actors greater control over their audition videos. For example, actors using the platform, or their agents, can track when files are opened or downloaded and delete them when they are no longer needed.

The first fully functional version of IRIS Casting Ecosystem will be ready by mid-September, after which the team will begin testing it with its first users.

According to Kissa, the team’s goals for this year are to attract new investors and secure its first paying customers. This summer, the startup also presented its solution at Cannes Next, held as part of the Cannes Film Festival, where it attracted interest from film industry professionals and received valuable feedback. “This summer, we attended the Cannes Film Festival with the Tehnopol team, and the meetings and conversations there made one thing very clear: technology in the creative industries is advancing rapidly. A good idea and a well-built product are not enough if we move too slowly,” Kissa said.

Olga Kurdovskaja, Programme Manager of the Tehnopol Film and Multimedia Accelerator, added that the IRIS Casting Ecosystem team is well positioned for success. “IRIS has a highly skilled team with deep industry expertise, as well as the ambition and technical capabilities needed to take its product to the global market. The Film and Multimedia Accelerator will continue to support the team as it moves into its next stages of growth,” Kurdovskaja said.

In the future, the IRIS Casting Ecosystem platform will also serve as a centralised talent database for casting companies, enabling them to find suitable talent for specific projects around the world.

The Film and Multimedia Accelerator is part of the IDA Hub Film and Multimedia Innovation Center, founded by IVEK, IVIA, and Tehnopol. The goal of this unique innovation center is to support the development of film talents and future smart creators, as well as to help revitalize and diversify the economy of Ida-Virumaa. The solutions created by the accelerated companies will bring innovation to both the region and the wider film industry.

The development of the IDA Hub Film Innovation Center is funded by the European Union through the Just Transition Fund measure.