The Netherlands Film Fund is setting up a new fund worth $410,500 (€300,000) to support the distribution of Dutch films abroad.

The Fund’s CEO Doreen Boonekamp told local press at the Rotterdam Film Festival that the money will be used to underwrite P&A costs for distributors picking up Dutch movies. Resources will also be made available for the dubbing of Dutch films. (This, it is anticipated, should benefit children’s movies.)

Boonekamp also revealed that the Fund is lobbying for the Dutch to set up a soft money scheme along the lines of Luxembourg’s Audiovisual Investment Certificates Programme.

The attraction of such a scheme is that it requires relatively financiers and “middlemen” to make it work.

It is widely accepted throughout the local industry that the Netherlands is falling behind its European rtivals because of its lack of a tax incentive to draw foreign productions to the country. The post-production sector in particular is suffering.

Boonekamp said that she had “the general feeling” that the new coalition Government “is open to it (a tax incentive) and that they see the need.”

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