Following up on last year’s Indigenous PERSPECTIVES on New Models for International Co-Productions, we bring together key voices from Indigenous cinema to examine the foundational role of writers and producers to ensure creative sovereignty and ethical collaboration when navigating cross-cultural partnerships. As a starting point, we ask how creative and producing leadership can safeguard cultural authenticity and story ownership, and build production ecosystems based on community protocols and values. We’ll explore what happens when co-productions are built on story and structure – developed hand-in-hand across nations, languages, and cultures – as opposed to retrofitting partnerships around financing or incentives.