Ben Roberts, chief executive of the British Film Institute (BFI), and BFI chair Jay Hunt today said they were in talks with the UK government regarding the possibility of rejoining the Creative Europe Media programme.
Hunt confirmed there are “more positive noises from this [Labour] government” about rejoining Creative Europe, in comparison to the former Conservative government.
The UK was forced to withdraw from the funding programme following the country’s exit from the European Union. However, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway are not part of the EU but can participate in the programme as a third country.
According to the BFI, the UK received approximately €80.5m of European funding during the period of 2014-2020 via the Creative Europe Media programme. Some €36m was targeted towards distribution of UK films in Europe while UK companies received €44.5m.
Roberts and Hunt were giving evidence in front of the UK parliament’s cross-party culture, media and sport (CMS) committee to give evidence in the final day of hearings of the year-long film and high-end TV inquiry. The committee will then submit its recommendations to government.
The BFI heads outlined the many funding shortfalls in the UK film sector. Roberts said any UK return to Creative Europe Media and in what form was not yet clear. He said securing a long-term funding system for the UK Global Screen Fund (UKGSF) was the immediate priority coupled with bolstered governmental support for distributors and cinemas, with Hunt stating exhibitors are now “staring down the barrel of a crisis”.
The UKGSF is administered by the BFI and backed by the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). The initial £7m fund was launched in April 2021 to boost international development and distribution opportunities for the UK’s independent screen sector (across film, high-end TV, animation and video games) following the UK’s withdrawal from Creative Europe.
Roberts said the UKGSF showed the UK to be “arms wide open” to co-production, but also acknowledged it to be “one of our most in-demand funds” but with only 18% of applications successful.
Funding of £7m was recently secured from the DCMS for 2025/6 Roberts said he would like to see the funding given long-term security, and doubled.
Cinemas in “crisis”
Distribution and exhibitions are also sectors the BFI believes are in urgent need of additional intervention.
UK films in cinemas are only 9% of the market share, while in Italy, it is 25%. Roberts said he wanted a return to the “King’s Speech days” in which the UK market share was around 15-20%.
The Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC) could go some way to increasing the number of UK films being made, with Roberts noting the studio facilities have seen increased numbers of inquiries from independent films already.
However, as committee chair Caroline Dinenage observed, the concern would be “more British films are made but not seen”.
“We are now staring down the barrel of a crisis hitting cinemas,” said Hunt. “The press and advertising budgets are large, the risk for the distributors is huge, if we don’t now find a way of helping that part of the equation, some of the work we’ve done on the production side will not pay back.”
Roberts made positive noises about the proposal, championed by the Film Distributors’ Association, for a targeted tax relief for prints and advertising costs for films budgeted under £15m, to help the “diversity of supply” which, in turn, will get diverse audiences into cinemas.
He emphasised, “We do not believe cinema is also on its last legs.”
The BFI is in talks with the DCMS about more capital investment in cinemas, calling for more grant funding as Hunt observed some venues are “deteriorating, not the places you would want audiences to be enjoying great film”.
“It’s about recognising cinemas are at the very heart of the community,” said Hunt, “and are often the only artistic provision in some parts of the UK. They are driving £1bn in GVA [gross value added], getting people back to the high street and using small businesses”.
HETV and streamer levies
High-end TV drama producers, such as Sister’s Jane Featherstone and Bad Wolf’s Jane Tranter, who gave evidence to the committee, have advocated for a high-end TV tax relief, akin to the 40% IFTC for films up to £15m.
Asked by the committee on the BFI’s stance on this proposal, Roberts said: “Any intervention that grows the opportunity and pipeline we would see as worth exploring further”. However, he noted the IFTC took “several years [of] exhaustive” research and discussion to reach a consensus.
Hunt, who as well as being chair of the BFI is also the European creative director for US streamer AppleTV+, responded to a sense she took from submissions to the committee from the UK HETV community that “TV that talks to UK audiences only comes from the PSBs [public service broadcasters]”.
“It is also now coming out of inward investment,” she said.
For now, National Lottery funding administered by the BFI is focused on film. The BFI receives 2.7% of the National Lottery funding receipts, which has remained at a similar level for 25 years. “What we need to deliver with that lottery funding across skills, talent development, some of the research work we do – it’s apples and oranges with where we were 25 years ago,” said Roberts.
If National Lottery funding levels increased, would TV see more lottery support?
“Increasingly the lines of blurred… across our skills work, policy work, a lot of talent development work we do,” said Roberts.
He added: “We increasingly feel we have both arms around television – Jay as chair speaks to that.” Hunt took over as chair from Vue cinema chain founder Tim Richards in February 2024.
Hunt stopped short of saying if National Lottery funding was increased, this money would be put into HETV. “HETV investment is critical to growth of the sector – but I suspect there would be a lot of other calls [for increased funding].”
Peter Kosminsky, director of BBC series Wolf Hall, submitted written evidence to the inquiry stating streamers should pay a levy for producers making HETV for the PSBs.
Roberts said the BFI was conducting research into the impacts of any levy.
“We embrace the ecosystem we’ve got. We have moved a long way from when it felt like streamers are coming at us… It’s a fully integrated -business in the UK,” said Roberts. “Levies – big topic of conversation. There are various models running across Europe… There are different views of the consequences of imposing a model in the UK where the model is entirely different from France, could mean. At this stage, there is no consensus about what the best path forward is to support the sector.
“We are doing some research and analysis where we are scanning the landscape of where levies exist, what the impact of that looks like, it’s not a piece of research that will land at any recommendations, but it will be a very useful piece of analysis to really understand what the consequences of levies look like. We want to wait until we’re able to look at that, that will deliver in the summer.”
He described the UK market’s approach as “unique – pretty enviable to the rest of the world” with “no consensus a levy would be the right approach right now”.
Race
The committee raised the allegations of racial discrimination made against the BFI by filmmaker Faisal A Qureshi in 2023, who stated he had been inappropriately discouraged from bidding for funding and discriminated against on racial grounds when advised about applications by a representative who worked for a third-party organisation part-funded by the BFI. An independent report found there was not sufficient evidence to conclude whether Qureshi was discriminated against on racial grounds. However it did conclude the handling of his complaint had been badly handled, prompting an overhaul in the BFI’s complaints procedure last year.
Roberts responded: “We did make an apology for the manner in which a complaint was handled… I do want to stand by our record on supporting Black and global majority filmmakers. We’ve got EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] baked into our strategy. It’s one of the three core principles of Screen Culture 2033. We’ve set ourselves targets around supporting black and global majority filmmakers which are 40% in London and 30% UK-wide. In most areas of our investment in filmmakers we are exceeding those targets in the last year by some mile.”
He continued: “One of the challenges we’ve got in the film fund is only 6% of applications into production funds are successful. Of applications into our talent development programme – BFI Network – only 3% are successful. We are mostly in the business of turning down filmmakers… If we look at the data of who we have supported, I think we are actually doing a really good job.”
Hunt added that while that was “not a well-handled complaint” she has since appointed two anti-racism champions to the board.
“There will always be people who are disappointed – it doesn’t mean the [funding] choices that have been made are incorrect,” said Hunt.
Artificial intelligence
Hunt said the BFI’s approach to emerging AI technology’s application in the screen industries is: “Ensuring creative rights holders are correctly renumerated. Ensuring there is transparency, however that process is applied. Critically across the sector we are skilled up to navigate this complex new world order.”
The BFI is undertaking three pieces of research across the next three months on AI, looking at what is going on in UK, internationally and how AI may help the sustainability agenda. A board sub-committee has been set up to focus on AI.
On applications to the BFI for National Lottery funds, a question is now asked if the individual has or plans to use AI in their application, with 8% currently saying yes.
The BFI is also looking for funding for an AI observatory, which twice a year would feed out the latest knowledge and trends to the sector on AI, as well as a tech demonstrator hub.
Skills
Committee chair Dinenage reflected how the first iteration of the inquiry, which took place prior to the change in government, was “underwhelmed” by UK national skills body ScreenSkills during its session in front of the committee, with little confidence in the body’s ability to support the screen sectors adequately.
Dinenage was keen to understand where ScreenSkills, which is not part of the BFI but has received BFI funding support, was at with its five-year strategy plan and when a meaningful plan would be put in place.
“I’ll be generous to ScreenSkills – the challenge is huge because the workforce is so freelance,” said Roberts.
Hunt added momentum has now built from industry, which is helping key stakeholders get behind a renewed approach to skills. She recalled 18 months ago there was “a palpable crisis in the sector around delivery, productions were closing because there weren’t enough carpenters [etc]… The industry is engaged from a position of crisis. There is an obsession with getting it right now.”
No comments yet