„Careers in set jobs must be possible and natural, even with family commitments“
Nadja Radojevic (CEO) ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln
Nadja Radojevic grew up in Niedersachsen / Lower Saxony. She graduated from Fachhochschule Potsdam with a diploma in Cultural Work/Cultural Management and later completed a part-time MBA programme in Digital Media Law and Management at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf and the University of Potsdam.
Her first professional positions were at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York and at the Master School Drehbuch in Berlin.
From 2005 to 2020, she held various positions at the Erich Pommer Institut - from 2015 as Managing Director and Director of Continuing Education. In May 2020, Nadja Radojevic took over the management of the ifs International Filmschule Köln (Cologne).
She is a member of the European Film Academy and former chairwoman of the board and honorary member of Women in Film and Television Germany e.V.
Her surname Radojevic is stressed on the third syllable ("je").
Dear Nadja, you have children of your own and they are still relatively young - how do you and your partner manage to balance work and family life?
My husband handles most of the childcare and housework so I can focus on my job. At the same time, I try to spend as much time as possible with our children, so we have organised our everyday life accordingly. We moved from Berlin to Cologne four and a half years ago and live close to the ifs. That was a conscious decision to be able to spend time with the children before and after a full working day. It works quite well, although of course I'm often out and about on evening appointments or business trips.
Being the CEO of a film school is probably a full-time position, if not more. How does it work for you at IFS?
I usually work during regular business hours, but of course I am also flexible to look after our children if necessary. And when there's a lot going on, I get up very early in the morning to get the most important things done before I wake the rest of the family. That works better for me than sitting at my desk late at night. As I live so close to the ifs, I very rarely work remotely.
How frequently do you have to deal with overtime, evening obligations, festivals in other cities etc.?
As a managing director, you don't usually have contractually regulated weekly working hours and in this logic there is no overtime. Since I've had children, I've tried to limit my workload more, but it's still full-time plus X. Evening appointments occur with varying frequency - sometimes it's one appointment a week or sometimes none, then again it's a cluster. As far as business trips are concerned, it varies from year to year. Of course, it's a great advantage to work in a media centre like Cologne, where some important festivals and industry events take place right on site.
And what about your employees and their work-life balance?
The majority of my colleagues actually care for children or other relatives and many of them work part-time. As an organisation, we try to be as family-friendly as possible. We offer flexible working hours, mobile working and make sure, for example, that meetings are scheduled so that everyone can attend. It is also important to me that management positions and part-time work are not mutually exclusive. In fact, many of our heads of department - both men and women - work part-time and do so very successfully.
Do you have students with children or other family commitments?
Yes, we have some students with children and here we have learned that it is important to be able to plan, i.e. that, for example, shooting dates should be fixed as early as possible so that childcare can be organised accordingly. Students with children also have the option of extending the deadlines for examinations, such as term papers. The respective departments are in close contact with ‘their’ students and can therefore react individually to personal challenges. However, we are not yet perfectly positioned in this area and are working on improving further.
Is this something you are discussing with the CEO of the other film schools about this or is it not yet an issue?
We are in regular dialogue and back in 2018 - even before my time at the ifs - there was an initiative by German film schools for more gender equality with a joint paper that also addressed the compatibility of work and family.
I was delighted to get you on board straight away for a collaboration for our Modern Film Family event (15.3.24). How important is this topic for you, both personally and as a film school director?
This topic is very close to my heart because I want the media industry to remain an attractive workplace for people with family commitments. The problem at the moment is that many people leave the industry when they have children or switch from set jobs to areas of the industry that offer a more stable working environment. Many have been and continue to be faced with the decision ‘child or career’ and that should not be the case! Even though we are currently experiencing challenging times in the industry, I am convinced that we will once again face a shortage of skilled labour in the near future. The baby boomer generation is retiring and many people are leaving the industry due to difficult working conditions and the current situation of less productions. But better times will come again with more job opportunities. Only if we improve working conditions and are open for new concepts, such as job sharing, will we be able to keep well-trained people in our industry and attract new talents in the long term. Our joint event ‘Modern Film Family’ has shown that there are already some good initial approaches and that there is a willingness to try out new ideas. This is all still in a quite early stage, but we as an industry need to stay on top of this issue and push for the introduction of new ways of working.
It is my sincere wish that we can offer future generations of graduates who want to work in audiovisual media an industry in which a career in set professions is not only possible with children or other family commitments, but a given.
How long do you think it will take us to get there?
I don't know, but I hope that we as an industry will bring about this necessary change as quickly as possible.
Film plots can inspire and film characters can be role models. Can you think of a German film or television production in which the compatibility of family and career - whether children or older relatives - is portrayed in a good way, either centrally or marginally?
Hm, to be honest, not off the top of my head, but of course I don't know all German productions in detail. I would like to see more stories about committed fathers who - just like mothers - juggle between job and family with all the ups and downs. Father figures who take on an equal share of the caring work or are also single parents are far too rare on screen.