Women have always been part of the machinery that keeps the entertainment industry moving, but increasingly they are the ones deciding how that machinery should work. Behind concerts, festivals, tours and international productions are women working as promoters, producers, strategists, publicists and company founders, often managing the less visible side of the business: negotiations, budgets, logistics, artist relationships and the difficult task of understanding what audiences actually want.
That change is interesting as live entertainment itself changed rapidly. Concerts and festivals are no longer only about who gets up on stage and performs. Audiences increasingly expect something more complete – opportunities to meet artists, workshops, talks, cultural programmes and experiences that make them feel involved rather than simply watching a show. Asian entertainment has accelerated that development considerably, with music, television, fandom, fashion and digital culture frequently crossing into one another. For organisers working between Asia and Europe, understanding those relationships can be every bit as important as booking an artist.
One of the women working in that space is Emmanuelle Amelin, founder and President of 5 Oceans Entertainment. Her career stretches back more than 25 years and has taken her through luxury, private and corporate events, marketing, communications and international business development before bringing much of that experience into Asian entertainment. Through 5 Oceans, she now works with Asian partners across music, series and other entertainment projects, while helping artists and productions develop their presence in Europe.
Her work has also included bringing Asian artists to European stages. Now she is working on something considerably larger: The A Festival, co-organised by 5 Oceans Entertainment and Envol Production, which will take over the Paris Event Center on 24 and 25 October 2026.
The A Festival will not only bring K-pop to Paris; its programme will also combine live music with artist meetings, masterclasses, talks and other activities for fans. Artists announced for the festival include Thailand’s JASP.ER, ATLAS and 4EVE, South Korea’s TRENDZ, POW and Jacob of THE BOYZ, Filipino group ALAMAT, Japanese band 7!! (Seven Oops), Malaysian girl group DOLLA, Chinese artist Sunny Lukas and others. For JASP.ER, Paris will be a major first, as the group has never performed in Europe before, and the event appears to be their only European appearance this year.
Ahead of the first edition of The A Festival, we spoke with Emmanuelle Amelin about more than two decades working across entertainment and events, as well as what those 25 years have taught her about creating experiences for audiences. We also discussed her move into Asian entertainment, bringing artists and concerts to Europe, connecting two very different markets, and the enormous amount of work that goes into turning an ambitious idea such as The A Festival into something audiences can finally walk into and experience for themselves.
View of the Arts: You have spent 25 years working across different sides of the creative and entertainment industries. What made you look towards Asian entertainment and think, “This is where I want to build something between Asia and Europe”?
Emmanuelle Amelin: What really caught my attention was not only the quality and diversity of the content, but the entire ecosystem around it. Music, dramas, cinema, fashion, brands and live entertainment interact with each other in a very dynamic way. And European audiences were already responding to it, sometimes much faster than the traditional industry itself.
What I saw was a real cultural movement, but also a gap. There was enormous creativity coming from Asia and a growing European audience, yet there were still relatively few structures capable of genuinely connecting the two markets – not simply importing an artist or organising a concert, but understanding both sides and building something sustainable between them. That is what interested me; I didn’t want to reproduce an Asian model in Europe, and I didn’t want to approach Asia through a purely European lens either.
I wanted to create a connection where artists, producers, creators and audiences from both sides could meet, work together and develop projects together.
VOA: The A Festival is bringing together artists from across Asia rather than concentrating solely on one market. We have Korean, Thai, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian and Burmese talent on the programme. How important was it for you to show European audiences that Asian entertainment is much broader than the few industries they may already know?
EA: It was absolutely essential. In fact, it is one of the reasons we created The A Festival. In Europe, when people talk about Asian entertainment, they often immediately think about Korea or Japan, and more recently Thailand. But Asia is incredibly diverse, and there is so much talent, creativity and content coming from many different countries that European audiences still have very little opportunity to discover.
From the beginning, Ely from Envol Production and I didn’t want The A Festival to be built around one country or one industry. We wanted Korean artists to share the same festival with Thai, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian or Burmese artists, and for the audience to move naturally from music to actors, dramas, dance, culture or other forms of entertainment.
VOA: The line-up is incredibly varied, from established names to artists who are only beginning to build an audience in Europe. When you and the team were putting the programme together, what were you looking for in an artist beyond popularity or follower numbers?
EA: Follower numbers have never been enough for me. Of course they are information, and we look at them, but they don’t tell you whether an artist belongs on a stage or what they can bring to an audience. When we programme an event, we look first for identity. We want to understand what makes an artist different, what they have to say, how they perform, and what kind of connection they can create with people.
With The A Festival, this was even more important because we are not simply putting together a series of concerts; we are creating an experience. Some artists are already very established, while others are arriving in Europe at a much earlier stage of their development, but each of them has a reason to be there. After so many years, I also think part of my job is to trust instinct. Sometimes you see an artist and you know there is something there before the numbers prove it. Giving those artists an opportunity to meet a new audience is one of the most exciting parts of programming for me.
Ultimately, I would rather have an artist with a strong identity, real stage presence and something memorable to offer than choose someone simply because a number on social media is bigger.
VOA: Music is only one part of The A Festival. BL and GL actors and series are also strongly represented, alongside workshops, discussions and other activities. Why was it important to create something that reflects different sides of Asian entertainment rather than simply organising another music festival?
EA: Because Asian entertainment isn’t just music, and I think reducing it to another music festival would have missed the whole point of what we wanted to create. What interests me is how connected everything is. An actor can sing, perform, work with fashion or brands; a series can introduce an audience to music; music can lead people towards dramas, dance, or other parts of the culture. These worlds constantly cross over; therefore, The A Festival had to reflect that.
Of course, concerts are an important part of the festival, but there is much more to it than that. We also have actors and series, workshops, masterclasses, talks, auditions and opportunities for the audience to get involved rather than simply sit and watch. BL and GL are part of that too, and for many European fans, they have become a way to discover Asian series, actors and artists in the first place.
At the same time, we wanted to explore something that hasn’t really been done at this kind of festival in Europe before: bringing Chinese actors into the programme. China has a huge entertainment industry, yet European audiences rarely get the chance to meet its actors at events like this. Ultimately, we didn’t want to create an event where people simply arrive, watch a concert and leave.
We wanted to create a place where they can spend the day discovering, learning, participating and experiencing different sides of Asian entertainment, including worlds they may never have had access to before.
VOA: European audiences for Thai BL and GL have grown enormously in a relatively short period of time. From your perspective working between the two markets, have European companies fully understood the potential of this audience yet, or are we still at the beginning of understanding how significant it could become?
EA: The audiences were ready; however, what was not ready in Europe were the structures, organisations and distribution systems around them. There was still a difficulty in understanding BL and GL verticals as complete ecosystems in their own right. Thailand and China understood this very well, but in Europe these ecosystems were still not always approached in that way. This is one of the things we understood and integrated into our own approach. It is also one of the reasons why we became co-producers of verticals, particularly BL, with a Thai production company.
Written and interviewed by Maggie Gogler
Featured image courtesy of The A Festival/5 Oceans Entertainment.
Tickets to the festival are on sale now, and for more information, you can follow The A Festival on Instagram and X.
View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to film, music, and the arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. As we continue to grow, we aim to deepen our coverage of Asian music while remaining committed to exploring and celebrating creativity across the global arts landscape.
