Sigurjón “Yoni” Sighvatsson at Locarno masterclass discusses propaganda films and efforts to launch David Lynch projects

Sigurjón “Yoni” Sighvatsson, a veteran producer with a reported 50-year career in film, used a masterclass at the Locarno film festival to discuss what he sees as the rise of propaganda films and how filmmakers’ personal working style can shape the stories they bring to the screen. Speaking as the masterclass opened, Sighvatsson said that in film, “you don’t need to go to a doctor to be diagnosed” because, in his view, many creative workers show traits that can be characterized as obsessive-compulsive disorder and ADHD, adding, “I have both.”

Sighvatsson’s comments also focused on the pressures facing modern production, particularly around content that can be used to persuade rather than inform. In the same opening remarks, he said he believes audiences and creators are navigating a media environment where propaganda becomes easier to produce and harder to distinguish, and he framed his discussion around how filmmakers respond to that shift.

A major portion of the masterclass conversation centered on David Lynch and Sighvatsson’s efforts to help bring Lynch projects “off the ground,” according to remarks described in the event coverage. The masterclass included discussion of attempts related to Lynch’s Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks, with Sighvatsson characterizing them as ongoing “battles” rather than concluded deals.

The masterclass also positioned Sighvatsson’s career as a sustained attempt to get difficult or ambitious films made, while remaining attentive to practical realities of financing, assembling creative teams, and securing the conditions needed for production to proceed. In the coverage of the session, the producer presented his experience as a long arc of trying to translate challenging creative intentions into actual screen work.

Within that context, Sighvatsson connected his personal approach to his larger professional themes, describing how his self-understanding of attention and compulsions fits into how he works with others on productions. He did not present the remarks as medical advice, but rather as a way to explain the overlap he perceives between temperament and filmmaking.

Locarno’s masterclass setting placed the conversation in a public festival forum, with the implied next step being continued attention by industry attendees to the practical, often dispute-heavy process of moving major intellectual properties through rights, development, and production. Beyond Sighvatsson’s remarks, the session coverage did not provide production start dates or release timelines for the Lynch-linked efforts.

For festival-goers and industry participants, the masterclass underscored how debates about propaganda and persuasion are increasingly intertwined with concrete production decisions, from what stories get financed to which projects reach stages where filming can begin. It also highlighted that even well-known directors can face prolonged paths from creative concept to deliverable work when rights, development, or production readiness become obstacles.

Sighvatsson’s appearance at Locarno therefore served both as a career retrospective and as a window into the behind-the-scenes mechanics of contemporary film-making, with the producer placing his views on propaganda alongside his own account of the challenges involved in launching high-profile Lynch projects. The coverage offered no additional confirmed outcomes from those “battles” at the time of publication.