MEDICI — The Film Funding Journey

Reports Previous Workshops

Development funding landscape: Julio Talaverra / European Audiovisual Observatory
(see PDF)

Presentation of the study launched in July 2016:

Public financing for film and television content – The state of soft money in Europe (2010 to 2014)

The report covers three pillars of public financing in Europe.

Public funding (film funds)
Fiscal incentives with more then 20 incentive schemes launched in Europe in the past 5 years
Obligations of the industry to invest in film and TV production, which mostly applies to broadcasters

There are 249 public funds across 35 European countries
There are 3 geographical levels of public film funds:
- supranational level (18 funds)
- national/federal (63 funds) and
- subnational (regional and local) level (167 funds)
The average yearly income of the 249 public funds in Europe is 2.53 billion euros.
Subnational funds represent 61% of the funds in Europe, but manage around 17% of the public money available as opposed to national/federal funds that represent less than 30% of the entire funds in Europe, but manage almost 75% of the money
10% of the funding is spent on development (both film and TV)
The money comes mostly from the levies on broadcasters (particularly in France) and from the governments at all levels (national, federal, regional and local)
France is the leader in public financing. It alone represents round 40% of public financing in Europe.

The funds have 4 major support schemes:
- Feature film production
- TV production
- Feature film development
- TV development
At the subnational level, more than 70% of the total spend is allocated to the said four major categories. At the national/federal level, this percentage is around 60%. At the supranational level there are significantly fewer investments in production
When it comes to the feature film support, all countries have some kind of schemes for both production and development, which is not the case with TV support schemes that are still absent in some countries
In the course of the past five years, some support categories, such as video-games and structural funding, have been launched, mainly due to digitization
The larger a country is and the richer its fund is, the bigger possibility for scheme diversification exists (games, structural funding, multimedia schemes, etc.), with the exceptions of Denmark and Norway that still have very diversified schemes despite their size
There is also a new trend of international co-development initiatives between the funds (French-German Minitraité, Polish-German co-development fund, German-Turkish co-development and co-production fund, French-Greek and French-Italian co-development TV funds, Irish-Northern Irish TV co-development fund between the local broadcasters, etc.)

The report provides a comprehensive overview only when it comes to public film funds. It offers, however, a limited overview of fiscal incentives and investment obligations on the part of the industry due to the lack of data
It is impossible to compare figures about public and private financing because the private financing data are difficult to track just as the data on fiscal incentives
It is also difficult to differentiate the amount of money coming from broadcasters’ legal obligation and the actual investment by broadcasters
Homogeneous reporting from different funds in different countries is still impossible. It is difficult to compare similar schemes in different countries because they are defined in different ways. Development, for example, includes different things in different countries
Methodologies differ from fund to fund. European countries define spend in different ways and there is no a unified way of doing statistics
The EAO’s analysts initially aimed at collecting row data from the national film agencies, and breaking down the fund schemes into very small and detailed categories. However, it was possible only in case of a marginal number of countries (Croatia, for example). In the end, the analysts had to divide data into big categories (feature film production, for example, includes diverse categories such as financing of production, scriptwriting, pre-production, project development etc.)

The Development of Content: Challenges and Opportunities – Public Funds as Pawns or Players?