Run out of application memory

I cannot even boot up my project anymore, because I have 'run out of system memory'. I am so frustrated.

I am a cinematographer and video editor. I have many hard drives of footage that is big (RED camera footage ect).

My old computer worked fine for editing projects, but once I started trying to make a showreel using all footage from lots of different projects, on lots of different drives and.... it stalled immidiately. So, I bought a 24TB fast Ext HD, transferred everything on to that, and tried again. Again, the computer could not handle it. So I went through my piggy bank and forked out for a Macbook Pro M1 Max.

And the result. The same! But with a new error message. "Your system has run out of application memory".

I have gone through my Premiere Pro setting and re-roted and deleted cache files, as well as multiple other optimising settings. I have cleared a lot of files from the computer which is less than half full on storage. I have made proxies of the video files in the timeline. I have playback set to 1/16 of the res of those proxies.

Still, system failure and lag. I am lost. I understand that importing footage from lots of different folders on the drive is a bit to proccess, but with everything I have done to combat the lag, it should work better than this.

I can't move forward in my business without sorting this issue. Any help would be so appriciated.