Austria is considering launching a film industry incentive before the end of this year.

Local film producers, who have been lobbying politicians to support the scheme, received a boost earlier this week when Bernd Neumann, the German minister for culture, appeared at an industry event in Vienna to talk about the German Federal Film fund (DFFF).

Neumann told the audience, which included his Austrian opposite number Minister of Culture Claudia Schmied of the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), that the DFFF incentive scheme had supported 209 projects with a total of €129m between the start of 2007 and April 2009. The funding from the DFFF had generated a “German spend” of €812m.

Following the presentation, Karlheinz Kopf, parliamentary group chairman of the Austrian People’s Party, said that such a scheme should be introduced in Austria by the end of 2009.

In the past Austrian Minister of Culture Claudia Schmied has faced difficulties persuading her colleagues at the Finance and Economics Ministries about the need for the fun.  However, on Thursday (June4), the Viennese daily newspaper Wiener Zeitung reported that the Finance Minister Josef Pröll of the Austrian People’s Party had now promised his “full support” for the scheme’s realisation.

Buoyed by the Oscar nomination for Götz Spielmann’s Revanche and the winning of the Palme d’Or for Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Austrian producers had called for the introduction of a scheme on the lines of the DFFF with funding of €20m.

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