How Colombia is luring high-profile international productions

The depth of Colombia’s rich artistic culture is writ large across this year’s fall festivals, emblematic of a Latin American hub renowned for its creativity, talent base and vibrant production scene.

A strong presence at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) brings Discovery selection Horizonte from Cesar Augusto Acevedo, the 2015 Cannes Camera d’Or-winning director of Land And Shade; Centrepiece entry Pimpinero: Blood And Oil, Prime Video’s action feature from director Andres Baiz (Griselda, Narcos); and the drama Beloved Tropic starring Chilean icon Paulina Garcia and Colombia’s Jenny Navarrete, also in Centrepiece.

At Venice Film Festival, Monica Taboada Tapia’s Soul Of The Desert played in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar, while later this month Yennifer Uribe Alzate’s debut feature and Berlin Forum premiere Skin In Spring(La Piel En Primavera) will play in San Sebastian’s Horizonte Latinos programme. Meanwhile Cristina Gallego, the renowned producer of Embrace Of The Serpent and Birds Of Passage, is behind Her Lightness, the feature debut from Rosa Maria Rodriguez that recently won a grant at Locarno’s Open Doors and heads to San Sebastian’s Europe-Latin America co-production forum.

This span of titles — just a taste of Colombia’s annual output — is the result not only of the country’s proud film heritage, but a slew of incentives, year-round support and a robust market and festival presence under the auspices of Proimagenes Colombia, the non-profit headed by Claudia Triana that oversees Colombia Film Commission and promotes the audiovisual industry. Promotion director Carlos Moreno and promotion deputy manager Katalina Tobon will be in Toronto talking up what the country can offer international productions by way of cash rebates, tax credits, crews and locations, and facilitating meetings for Colombian filmmakers intent on forging co-production partnerships.

Enticing incentives

For years Colombia’s enticements and affordable costs compared to other parts of Latin America have attracted a steady flow of productions — and it shows no sign of letting up. In 2020, Colombia modified its Law 1556, which was established in 2012 to attract international productions as a complement to 2003’s Law 814 incentivising local productions.

The sunset date has been extended to 2032 for Law 1556, which set up the Colombia Film Fund (FFC) cash rebate offering 40% back on audiovisual services expenses and 20% back on logistics services for qualifying films, series and animation with Colombian partners. The 2020 revision established the CINA transferable tax credit (Audiovisual Investment Certificate), which offers qualifying international productions a tax discount certificate for 35% of the total investment in the country. It applies to film, series, video games, commercials and animation.

“We have been able to show the various governments that have been in Colombia since 2012 how beneficial this incentive is to the country and to the Colombian economy,” says Colombia film commissioner Silvia Echeverri. “It doesn’t only impact the audiovisual sector — it brings money to tourism, construction and other areas.”

The call for applications is open year-round until the annual allocation is met. This year, 22 projects have been approved so far for the CINA incentive, and the cap for 2024 is $76.8m. One project has been approved for FFC, and this year’s cap is $2.3m.

The 2023 Hollywood strikes dented international production — Echeverri estimates around 60% of last year’s CINA allocation was fulfilled. However, the pipeline is filling up rapidly.

CINA has supported 2023 and 2024 productions such as Paddington In Peru, John Cena action comedy Freelance, Lionsgate thriller Shadow Force and a raft of projects from streamers, who can access the incentives by investing in Colombian projects and talent. Amazon Studios financed the thriller The Initiated(Los Iniciados), while Net­flix’s upcoming adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s celebrated novel One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Cien Años De Soledad) is one of the platform’s most lavish productions ever in Latin America (see page 48).

Across the region

Securing high-profile productions matters, especially in light of neighbouring activity. Nearby powerhouse Mexico lacks a national incentive but boasts a strong industry and ties to Hollywood, while Sao Paolo in Brazil, Dominican Republic with its soundstages, Panama, Puerto Rico and ambitious Ecuador all offer rival packages.

Yet successive Colombian administrations have kept the audiovisual incentives secure, bolstered by a deep talent base and an improved internal security profile since the dark days of the war on drugs that has enabled production to spread beyond the capital Bogota. “Location-wise for national projects and international projects, Colombia is becoming more and more attractive,” says Moreno. “There are already regional institutions that are working towards having maybe a film commission, or at least a film office that can support production services.”

Echeverri picks up the thread. She wants to build a talented, nationwide crew base outside Bogota. The film commissioner is preparing to launch a training programme later this year that will include English-language tuition. “We want to decentralise production and train all over Colombia so productions can work with [local] crews wherever they are,” she says.

A priority for Moreno is to champion Colombia’s diverse storytelling and broaden the focus away from stories of war, tragedy and violence that have so often served as catnip for international festival programmers. “I’m not saying we don’t do that,” Moreno says, “but now in upcoming films you can start to see a new gaze into the complexity of content and the stories that are now being made in Colombia.”

Proimagenes’ ‘Stories In Every Flavor’ campaign highlights the country’s cultural and regional diversity and has championed tales with Indigenous elements such as Tapia’s Soul Of The Desert, about a trans Wayúu woman in the northern desert region of La Guajira, and Eliana Nino’s upcoming Colombia-Spain co-production Seeds (Semillas) shot in the eastern plains.

TIS Productions, one of Colombia’s many production services companies that works hand-in-glove with international productions sourcing crews and processing incentives, is spread out across the country. It operates a Cartagena hub by the Caribbean, with Paramount and MTV producing reality shows such as Ex On The Beach for numerous international producers.

TIS Productions has been around for 26 years and is now 75%-owned by Paramount Global, with SVP and general manager Samuel Duque owning the remaining 25%. He handled production services in Cartagena for the US producers of 2023 box-office smash Sound Of Freedom, and says: “If someone wants 100% fulfilment of the project, we can do it. We’re trying to emulate Hollywood standards.”

Duque values state support as the head of what is also a fully-fledged production company with a large library of intellectual property. “Without Proimagenes and the [incentives], it would be difficult to maintain what Colombia has built in the last 70 years in the industry, because we are not a big country,” he says.

Javier Chapa’s Los Angeles-based independent producer Mucho Mas Media shot the upcoming horror Rosario, starring Emeraude Toubia and David Dastmalchian, in Bogota doubling for New York. Highland Film Group represents worldwide sales on the project, Mucho Mas Media’s third in three years to shoot in Colombia, which benefited from the FFC fund.

“We’ve got a good relationship down there with the production services company Jaguar Bite, and Proimagenes are supportive and always come to the sets,” says Chapa. “We’ve been successful in getting back the incentives on all our projects. I will continue to find opportunities to work there.”

Shooting gallery: recent major productions in Colombia

Title (format; production company)	Incentive	Local production services
Eva Lasting (series; La Primera Vez, Netflix)	CINA	Caracol Television
Freelance (feature; Endurance Media, Sentient Entertainment)	CINA	Wideangle Films
The Initiated (feature; Los Iniciados, Amazon MGM Studios)	CINA	Aldea Producciones
The Long Game (feature; Fifth Season, Mucho Mas Media)	FFC	Jaguar Bite
The Luckiest Man In America (feature; Plenty Good, Fabula)	FFC	Jaguar Bite
One Hundred Years Of Solitude (series; Cien Años de Soledad, Netflix)	CINA	Dynamo Producciones
Paddington In Peru (feature; Studiocanal, Heyday Films)	CINA	AG Studios Colombia
Pedro Páramo (feature; Netflix; post-production, Artistes Folks Colombia)	CINA	post-production
Pimpinero: Blood And Oil (feature; Amazon MGM Studios)	CINA	Dynamo Producciones
Rosario (feature; Mucho Mas Media)	FFC	Jaguar Bite
Shadow Force (feature; Lionsgate, Made With Love Media)	CINA	Dynamo Producciones

Vital support

Local talents such as Paola Andrea Perez Nieto and Natalia Santa need no reminding of the vital role played by Proimagenes. Nieto, a longtime line producer who worked on Land And Shade, Prime Video’s The Initiatedand Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, took on Horizonte as the first film developed through her company Inercia Peliculas. She secured some $200,000 of the drama’s $1.1m budget from FFC as the Colombian co-producer, with the balance coming from France, Luxembourg, Chile and Germany.

“The support of Proimagenes is very important because this is the first capital that we have to [help us] find partners outside,” says Nieto.

Santa has directed two films in 14 years, most recently this year’s SXSW selection Malta, an intimate character study about a stifled young woman. To pay the bills she has worked on Netflix projects for seven years, and happens to be the head writer on One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

Malta came together with Argentinian and Norwegian co-producers through various iterations of BAM, the Bogota Audiovisual Market organised by Proimagenes. The film cost $450,000 to make and Santa secured $250,000 from Colombia’s Film Development Fund (FDC).

This fund was established by Law 814, commonly known as the Film Law, in 2003. Local productions and Colombian co-productions go through a competitive application process to receive grants for every stage of a film project, funded through a fee paid by exhibitors, producers and distributors based on ticket sales of all films.

The Film Law also set up a tax incentive for investors and donors supporting Colombian film projects approved by the Ministry of Culture, allowing 165% of the amount invested or donated to be deducted from gross income

Under the auspices of FDC, support is also on hand for Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and Raizal filmmakers (from the Raizal islands, south of Jamaica). Some $800,000 has been allocated between 2020 and 2023, and this year’s allocation for new projects is $500,000.

Malta is flourishing at the box office thanks to the local support mechanism. By mid-August, the drama had remained in cinemas for five weeks and earned $27,000 through Cine Colombia — a remarkable amount for a local title competing with the likes of Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.

“People say we’re spending public money from the state that no-one sees in theatres, and in a way it’s true,” Santa says. “But on the other hand these art films are creating a memory of Colombia, a history of our time. Proimagenes is supporting a generation that is asking questions about ourselves and our history. That’s beautiful.”

• Major sales projects at Toronto 2024 - latest updates