EGEDA US

News from Egeda

May 2012

New French subsidy fund for international co-productions

Application period now open for ‘Aide aux Cinémas du Monde’ (‘World Cinema Support’), a new French subsidy fund for international co-productions

France’s Centre National du Cinéma (CNC) and the Institut français have published the rules for the first call for proposals for ‘Aide aux Cinémas du Monde’ (‘World Cinema Support’), a new subsidy program which aims to support international co-productions and promote cultural diversity.

This initiative, which replaces the Fonds Sud Cinéma and AFLE subsidy funds, has an initial allotment of 6 million Euros (nearly 10 million US dollars), planned to support from 40 to 60 projects over four annual application periods.

Applicants must present projects by non-French directors and to be filmed outside of France. In addition, a French company must be a co-producer of the project.

A committee of professionals will select projects based on “artistic quality, their ability to present different points of view and new ideas to the general public, as well as the relative weakness of the foreign professional network on which the projects would depend,” according to a CNC press release.

The subsidies have ceilings of 250,000 Euros for a pre-filming project and 50,000 Euros for a post-filming project. The amount may not exceed 50% of the funding provided by the French co-producer (80% in the event that a project is the director’s first or second feature-length film or for films with a total budget less than 1.25 million Euros). The first application period is May 3-11, 2012 and the second will be June 11-20, 2012.

More information can be found on the website for the CNC, Centre National du Cinéma of France: www.cnc.fr

Also, The Madrid Film Commission Foundation will be on-hand at the 65th Cannes Film Festival, at which, in addition to organizing a new European co-production gathering of the C.R.C (Capital Regions for Cinema), meetings will be held with British and American producers interested in co-productions and filming in Spain.