VIQI and Cinando: Understanding the Difference Between Market Infrastructure and Market Intelligence

Author:

By Kunal Barai
Kunal Barai leads Global Markets at Vitrina.AI, working with producers and financiers across 100+ countries to facilitate content financing and co-production matchmaking. He recently hosted a roundtable on AI for Film Financing: Unlocking Smarter Global Matchmaking and Funding Strategies at MIP London 2026. Earlier, he spent 12+ years at Nielsen/Gracenote and completed MIT Sloan’s executive program on AI strategy.

If you work in international film sales, distribution or co-production, you almost certainly know Cinando. It is the official platform of the Marche du Film at Cannes, integrated into the operations of the European Film Market at Berlinale, the American Film Market and MIPTV. For the international film sales circuit, it is close to infrastructure: the place where titles are submitted, screeners are watched, buyer contacts are managed and market schedules are organised.

What Cinando is less often described as is a year-round market intelligence tool. That is not a criticism of the platform; it is a reflection of what it was designed to do. Understanding that distinction — and knowing what fills the space Cinando does not cover — is useful for any M&E professional trying to get the most out of the tools available to them. That is where Vitrina’s VIQI enters the picture.

This article explains what Cinando does, where its design choices create natural limits, and how VIQI addresses the parts of the M&E professional’s workflow that the film market directory model was not built to cover.

Cinando, the market calendar, and what sits outside it

1. What Cinando actually is — and the context it was built for

Cinando is a professional platform operated by the Marche du Film, the official film market of the Cannes Film Festival. Its origins are in the film sales circuit, and its design reflects that heritage: a searchable audiovisual database of companies, contacts and title catalogues; a screener platform through which buyers watch films under market consideration; and operational tools for market participation, including badge management, catalogue submissions and scheduling.

Those capabilities make Cinando genuinely indispensable during Cannes, EFM and AFM. Sales agents submit titles through it. Buyers browse and request screeners through it. Festival selectors and acquisitions executives use it to track the titles in consideration. For anyone whose professional rhythm is organised around the international film market calendar, Cinando is the primary operational environment during those periods.

The important qualifier is in that last sentence: during those periods. The major international film markets collectively occupy a fraction of the working year. Cannes runs for under two weeks. EFM for five days. AFM for eight. The question of what professional-grade market intelligence looks like between those windows is a different one — and it is the question VIQI was designed to answer.

It is worth being precise about what VIQI is: a conversational AI built on a proprietary structured dataset covering roughly 360,000 companies, 1.3 million titles, three million profiles and over 30 million validated industry relationships across film, television, animation and documentary. Users ask questions in plain language and receive synthesised, cited answers drawn from deal signals, commissioning data and behavioural patterns. It is not a screener platform and it does not replicate Cinando’s market infrastructure. It addresses a different layer of the same industry.

2. The intelligence gap between film markets — and how it gets filled

Between Cannes and the next major market, a great deal happens in the global M&E industry. Streamers announce commissioning mandates. Distributors close acquisitions. Financiers shift allocation strategies. Production companies enter new co-production arrangements. None of this waits for market season, and the professionals best positioned to act on it are those who have access to it as it develops.

Cinando’s model is not built to track this kind of ongoing activity. Its strength is the organisation of market-period information: who is attending, what they are selling, which titles are in the screener system. The deal intelligence and mandate tracking that strategic decisions between markets depend on falls outside what the platform was designed to provide.

VIQI fills that gap with a different kind of tool entirely. Rather than a directory that users browse, it is a conversational AI built on a proprietary structured dataset covering deal signals, commissioning briefs, fund movements and relationship data across the global M&E supply chain. Users ask questions in natural language and receive synthesised, sourced answers that reflect what is actually happening in the market — at any point in the year, not only during scheduled events.

3. Before, during and after the market — where each platform adds value

A practical way to map the two platforms is to follow the timeline of a film market cycle and ask what each one contributes at each stage.

Before the market. Cinando allows sales agents to prepare their market submissions: registering titles, setting up screeners, confirming buyer accreditations and browsing the contact directory to plan outreach. VIQI can support the strategic layer of that same preparation — identifying which buyers have been most active in a specific genre or territory over the past twelve months, understanding where deal activity has clustered and surfacing the relationship context that makes outreach more targeted.

During the market. Cinando is the operational environment: scheduling, screener access, contact management, catalogue browsing. This is where the platform is at its most active and most essential. VIQI is less central during the market period itself, though it remains available for real-time questions about company backgrounds, deal histories and relationship context that come up in the course of meetings.

After the market — and between markets. Once the market closes, Cinando’s activity level drops significantly. VIQI’s does not. The months between markets are when strategic intelligence has the most lead time — when understanding which streamers are shifting mandates, which territories are seeing increased acquisition activity or which co-production pathways are opening can shape decisions well before the next market begins. This is the part of the year where the two platforms diverge most clearly.

4. Film sales agents, producers and financiers — different needs, different tools

The professionals who use Cinando and VIQI are often the same people, but they reach for each platform at different moments in their work.

Sales agents. For international sales agents, Cinando is the primary professional tool during market periods — there is no substitute for its screener infrastructure and buyer directory in that context. VIQI is more relevant to the strategy that surrounds market participation: understanding the acquisition landscape in specific territories before committing a title to a slate, or tracking buyer activity between markets to refine outreach.

Producers seeking co-production partners. Cinando’s company directory provides a useful starting point for co-production prospecting, particularly for identifying which production companies are active in specific territories. VIQI goes further into the relationship and deal data — surfacing which companies have a track record of closing co-productions in specific budget ranges and content categories, which is the intelligence that makes initial outreach more efficient.

Financiers and streamers. For this group, Cinando’s film market orientation is less directly relevant. The decisions financiers and streamers make — where to allocate capital, which genres and territories to prioritise, which production partners to approach — depend on the kind of ongoing deal and mandate intelligence that VIQI is built to provide. Cinando’s screener platform and market directory were designed for a different set of professional questions.

Business development and strategy teams. Strategy work does not run on a market calendar. The teams responsible for identifying partnership opportunities, monitoring competitive positioning and tracking market evolution need access to current intelligence at any point in the year. VIQI’s continuous coverage of deal flow, fund movements and commissioning activity across the global M&E supply chain is designed for exactly this kind of ongoing work.

5. Cinando and VIQI side by side — what each platform covers

The table below maps the principal differences between the two platforms across the dimensions that matter most to M&E professionals. The goal is not to rank them but to clarify what each one does well, so that professionals can identify which part of their workflow each one addresses.

6. How to think about which one your workflow is missing

The most useful question is not which platform is more important, but which part of your current workflow is least well served.

If the gap is in market operations — submitting titles, managing screener access, navigating buyer contacts at Cannes or AFM — Cinando is the tool for that. It is deeply embedded in how the international film sales circuit functions, and for sales agents and distributors whose work is organised around those markets, it is close to essential.

If the gap is in what happens the rest of the year — tracking which buyers are active and in what categories, understanding where deal flow is moving before the next market, identifying co-production partners by track record rather than territory alone, or monitoring commissioning trends across streaming and broadcast — that is a different category of need. It is the kind of intelligence that does not wait for Cannes, and it is what VIQI was built to provide.

Many M&E professionals find that both tools are relevant to their work, for different reasons and at different moments. The practical question is whether your current toolkit covers both ends: the market-period infrastructure that Cinando provides, and the year-round intelligence layer that sits around and between markets. If only one of those is in place, that is where the gap is.

For most of the international film industry, the market calendar is essential but it is not the whole picture. The deals that get made at Cannes are shaped by months of strategic preparation. The relationships that deepen at EFM are often the result of intelligence gathered between markets. Cinando manages the moment. VIQI helps you prepare for it — and act on what follows.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can I watch or share project screeners directly inside Vitrina VIQI like I do on Cinando?

No. VIQI is an AI-powered intelligence engine and data ecosystem, not a file-hosting or transactional screener platform. While Cinando is purpose-built to act as a secure digital screening room for film markets, VIQI focuses on providing the real-time business intelligence, buying mandates, and relationship mapping required to make those screenings happen in the first place.

Does VIQI replace the need for a Cinando subscription during major festivals like Cannes or EFM?

Not at all. The two platforms serve completely different functions in an entertainment professional’s workflow. Cinando acts as the physical-to-digital infrastructure for badge management, scheduling meetings, and cataloguing operational market presence during live festival periods. VIQI acts as a year-round strategic layer, letting you analyze historical deal tracks, find active buyers, and plan strategies during the months when no festivals are actively running.

Where does VIQI get its data, and how frequently is it updated compared to traditional market directories?

Traditional market directories rely heavily on periodic manual company submissions, which often cause data to become stale between events. VIQI relies on a proprietary structured dataset spanning over 360,000 M&E companies. It continuously tracks ongoing deal signals, shifting streaming platform mandates, content transactions, and corporate funding shifts directly across the global supply chain, offering an active view of the market rather than a static snapshot.

Is VIQI strictly limited to the international indie feature film circuit?

No. While Cinando’s roots and primary focus remain tightly linked to the international film sales, theatrical distribution, and festival networks, VIQI’s data infrastructure spans the entire global Media and Entertainment (M&E) space. This includes complete supply chain tracking for television series, animation houses, streamers, documentary projects, and emerging digital entertainment content types.